76 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE. 



And like the heart of a woman, it takes its coloring 

 again from that which environs it. Let it be shade, 

 and there is nothing but coldness and insipidity ; let 

 it be sunshine, and life leaps up as at the touch 

 of an enchanter. As said in a former paper, we 

 never see the actual beginnings of anything The 

 fruit that shines amid the foliage lay in the flower, 

 and was a rudiment when the petals were scarcely 

 broken. Its appearance, like that of Spring, is only 

 the last of a long series of preparations. All plants 

 produce fruit of some kind or other, not necessarily 

 eatable fruit, any more than every person talks and 

 acts so as to please and instruct. But in some shape 

 or other, last year, or this year, or next year, it is to 

 be found ; and though it may not answer our ideas of 

 fruit, as founded on grapes and apples, it is still fruit 

 in the strict and proper sense. Acorns are the fruit 

 of the oak quite as truly as filberts are the fruit of 

 that well-known tree which, in its wild state, we call 

 the hazel. " Acorn " is literally " oak-fruit/ 7 "corn " 

 being no more than a general term for fruit, where- 

 fore we speak of fields of corn, as distinguished 

 from those which supply our tables with roots and 

 leaves. The fruit, in a word, is the ripened pistil of 

 the flower, comprehending both shell and contents. 

 Here, in England, we have an immense preponderance 

 of dry and inedible fruits. In the tropics, on the con- 

 trary, those adapted for human food are very numer- 



