20 Fruits and Seeds 



LESSON 3 



Season. Third week in October. 

 Materials required for each pupil. 



One of each of the following fruits : snapdragon, 

 shepherds purse, (columbine), lychnis, (buttercup), 

 lucerne, beech nut, groundsel, wych elm, agrimony, 

 blackberry, herb bennet, sycamore. The fruits in 

 brackets ripen in the summer, dried ones should there- 

 fore be used if available, if not, they may be omitted. 

 Yew twig with berries. 



When seeds are ripe and ready to sow themselves 

 it is important that they should not always be merely 

 scattered on the ground under the tree or plant that 

 bore them. If this happened some tracts of ground 

 would be so crowded with the young of one kind of 

 plant that they would have little chance of living, while 

 a few miles away this same plant would be unknown. 

 Since seeds have no power in themselves of moving any 

 distance they make use of several outside agencies by 

 means of which they are distributed over the earth's 

 surface. 



The most important of these agents are : (1) birds 

 and animals, (2) water, (3) wind. The many different 

 sizes, shapes, and colours shown by fruits and seeds 

 vary according to which agent is going to be used. 



The various brightly coloured fruits we know depend 

 for their distribution on birds which like their sweet 

 flesh and eat them greedily, as those of you who have 

 cherry trees in your gardens know to your cost. As 

 long as the seeds are soft and unripe and the fruit hard 



