2i8 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



Moreover, their large and attractive fruits are much 

 more likely to get eaten and so dispersed by birds 

 than the smaller and less succulent berries of the 

 brambles. Furthermore, the cherry has a harder 

 stone around each seed, which is thus more effectually 

 protected against being digested, and the seed itself 

 consists of a comparatively big kernel, richly stored 

 with food-stuffs for the young plant, which thus starts 

 relatively well equipped in the battle of life. For all 

 these reasons the cherries are better off than the 

 brambles, and therefore they can afford to produce 

 fewer seeds to each flower, as well as tr make the 

 coverings of these seeds larger and more attractive to 

 birds. Originally, indeed, the cherry had two kernels 

 in each stone, and to this day it retains two little 

 embryo kernels in the blossom, one of which is usually 

 abortive afterwards (though even now you may some- 

 times find two, as in philipcena almonds) ; but one 

 seed being ordinarily quite sufficient for all practical 

 purposes, the second one has long since disappeared 

 in the vast majority of cases. 



The plum scarcely differs from the cherr>- in any- 

 thing important except the colour, size, and shape of 

 the fruit. It is, as we have already noted, a cultivated 

 variety of the blackthorn, in which the bush has be- 

 come a tree, the thorns have been eradicated, and the 



