XIV. THE FRUIT GIFT. 259 



seed," as a grain of corn ! a grain, whether 

 of corn, or any other grass, being precisely the 

 vegetable structure to which frutescent change is 

 for ever forbidden ! and to which the word seed 

 is primarily and perfectly applicable ! — the thing 

 to be sown, not grafted. 



9. But to mark this total incapability of fru- 

 tescent change, and connect the form of the seed 

 more definitely with its dusty treasure, it is better 

 to reserve, when we are speaking with precision, 

 the term ' grain ' for the seeds of the grasses : the 

 difficulty is greater in French, than in English : 

 because they have no monosyllabic word for the 

 constantly granular ' seed ' ; but for us the terms 

 are all simple, and already in right use, only 

 not quite clearly enough understood; and there 

 remains only one real difficulty now in our system 

 of nomenclature, that having taken the word ' husk ' 

 for the seed-vessel, we are left without a general 

 word for the true fringe of a filbert, or the chaff 

 of a grass. I don't know whether the French 

 'frange' could be used by them in this sense, if 

 we took it in English botany. But for the 

 present, we can manage well enough without it, 

 one general term, 'chaff,' serving for all the 

 grasses, 'cup' for acorns, and 'fringe' for nuts. 



10. But I call this a real difficulty, because I 



