CHERRIES ARE RIPE. 121 



the almond-like embryo. The flower, it is true, has a 



jpair of separate ovules, which ought, under ordinary 



circumstances, to develop into two seeds ; but as the 



fruit ripens one of them almost always atrophies. Such 



! diminution in the number of seeds invariably accompa- 



Inies every advance in specialization, or every fresh for- 



jward step in appliances for more certain distribution. 



The little hard nuts on the outside of the strawberry 



j number fifty or sixty ; the nutlets of the raspbeny num- 



jber only some twenty or thirty ; the pips of the apple, 



(relatively ill protected by the leathery core, range from 



ifive to ten ; the stones of the haw, with their bonier 



covering, are only two ; but in the plum tribe, with their 



(extreme adaptation to animal dispersion, the seeds have 



reached the minimum irreducibile of one. 



It is this highest tribe of all, accordingly, that supplies 

 us with what we call distinctively our stone-fruits. The 

 sloes of the common blackthorn have grown under culti- 

 vation into our domestic plums ; the two wild cherries 

 have grown into our morellos and bigaroons ; while an 

 Eastern bush has been gradually developed into our 

 more delicate apricots. The old-fashioned botanists have 

 thrust the peach and nectarine into a separate genus, 

 because of their wrinkled stones ; but common-sense 

 will show any one that it would be much easier to get a 

 peach out of an apricot than to get an apricot out of a 

 plum ; and, indeed, these artificial scientific distinctions 

 are fast breaking down at the present day. as we learn 

 more and more about the infinite plasticity of living 

 forms under cultivation or altered circumstances. Even 

 the almond, different as its nut appears from the plum 

 type of fruit, is really a plum by origin ; for in all other 

 particulars of flower, leaf, and habit it closely resembles 

 the nectarine, from which it has diverged only in the 



