HICKORY-NUTS AND BUTTERNUTS. 435 



erings to escape being observed and eaten. The reason for such a dis- 

 position on the part of the nut is easy enough to understand. In the 

 true or succulent fruits — fruits, that is to say, according to the popu- 

 lar and strictly practical sense of the word — the part we eat is not the 

 actual seed itself, the cherry-stone or plum-stone or raspberry-kernels 

 (which even if we swallow we do not digest), but a soft, pulpy covering 

 which has nothing essential to do with the young embryo or future 

 plantlet. In nuts, on the other hand, the part we eat is the actual 

 kernel or embryo itself, with all the starches, oils, and other food-stuffs 

 laid up for its use by the mother-plant. In the simplest and earliest 

 form of seeds, like those of mustard and cress, for example, there is 

 hardly any store of nutriment put away by the mother for the ben- 

 efit of its struggling seedling. These poorly endowed plantlets have 

 to open their green leaves to the sunlight the moment they begin to 

 sprout, and, unless they can assimilate fresh food from the air imme- 

 diately under that genial influence, they must die forthwith of pure 

 inanition. But at a very early period in the evolutionary history of 

 plants, some seeds began to be stored at the outset with small quanti- 

 ties of starch or oil, which enabled their budding embryos to push 

 their heads higher above the surrounding vegetation without depend- 

 ing entirely for support on the mere hand-to-mouth system of daily 

 gains. They had, so to speak, a small reserve of capital to live upon. 

 Of course, this gave all such plants a great advantage over their neigh- 

 bors in the struggle for existence : they could live under conditions 

 where poorer seedlings would starve and die ; and so, from generation 

 to generation, those kinds which laid by most material survived the best 

 on the average, till at last in many cases the embryo came to be very 

 richly endowed indeed with starches, oils, gluten, and other valuable 

 collected food-stuffs. This is especially the case with such seeds as 

 wheat, barley, rye, oats, Indian corn, rice, peas, beans, lentils, and buck- 

 wheat. 



Unfortunately for the plants, however, what will feed a seedling 

 will feed an animal just as well : and so, exactly in proportion as the 

 plants began to lay by food-stuffs for their own purposes in their em- 

 bryos, did the animals begin to prey feloniously upon these convenient 

 reservoirs of nutritious gums and starches. Not only does man eat 

 the cereals and pulses, which are the richest in nutriment of almost all 

 seeds, but many earlier and lower animals, such as harvest-mice, rats, 

 chipmunks, deer, antelopes, horses, cow-kind, and even prairie-dogs 

 commit great depredations upon them, both in the wild and cultivated 

 states. Still more particularly have large numbers of animals, such 

 as the squirrels, dormice, monkeys, parrots, nut-hatches, and even 

 many grubs, taken to feeding off the fruits and seeds of forest-trees 

 or woodland bushes. As a consequence, only those richly-stored seeds 

 have for the most part survived which possessed some natural means 

 of defense against their aggressive enemies ; and in many instances 



