1898.] ESSAYS. 101 



a summer or two ago as I took a walk from Stratford to Shot- 

 tcry by the same path across the fields that the young Will 

 Shakespeare took when he went, his young heart beating high 

 with hope and love, to woo and win Ann Hathaway. I remem- 

 ber that the walk was by a hedge all red with the little fruit of 

 the hawthorn. I got my pockets full to bring back with me 

 to America but I don't know what became of them ; I am afraid 

 that boyhood's habit asserted itself and I must have eaten them 

 unconsciously. 



I remember the delight of the discovery made by me from 

 a hint of Mr. Clodd's, that the hawthorn and the rose and the 

 apple and the strawberry are all sisters of one family, all roses. 

 I can recall yet my childish delight in tracing the family rela- 

 tionship. About the only particular in which it can be traced 

 is in the five petals of the flowers of the wild rose, the apple, 

 the strawberry, and the hawthorn. 



The roses and the birds grew up together in the great 

 process of creation, and there we have a bit of that Altruistic 

 co-operation rather than fierce competition in nature. The 

 birds wanted food and the roses wanted their seeds scattered, 

 so the roses enclosed their seed in a hard, indigestible covering 

 or shell and then put about it a soft, attractive pulp so that the 

 birds in feeding themselves would at the same time help the 

 roses to scatter their seed. And you notice how ingenious the 

 rose is, whether it be the apple or strawberry or what not. 

 How cleverly it keeps its fruit green until the seeds are ready, 

 so as to be unobserved by the birds, and keeps it sour, so as to 

 be unattractive to them ! And then how those sisters vary in 

 the way in which they set the seed in or about the swelling of 

 the stem that makes what we denominate the fruit. The straw- 

 berry, with its luscious swelling of the stem, and the seeds like 

 tiny nuts scattered on the surface ; the rose and haw, with 

 their swelling of the stem, and the seed inside of the fruit, as it 

 is too with the apple. Then again mark the difference : — where 

 the rose has plenty of seeds to spare, as in the strawberry, 

 raspberry or apple, the seed is not very carefully protected ; 

 but when there is only one to each fruit what a hard shell, as 



