154 



tered the main one, will be often useful But at first let the 

 student keep steadily to his conception of the two constant 

 parts, husk and seed, reserving the idea of shells and kernels 

 for one group of plants only. 



8. It will not be always without difficulty that he maintains 

 the distinction, when the tree pretends to have changed it. 

 Thus, in the chestnut, the inner coat of the husk becomes 

 brown, adheres to the seed, and seems part of it ; and we 

 naturally call only the thick, green, prickly coat, the husk. 

 But this is only one of the deceiving tricks of Nature, to com- 

 pel our attention more closely. The real place of separation, 

 to her mind, is between the mahogany-coloured shell and the 

 nut itself, and that more or less silky and flossy coating with- 

 in the brown shell is the true lining of the entire ' husk.' The 

 paler brown skin, following the rugosities of the nut, is the true 

 sack or skin of the seed. Similarly in the walnut and almond. 



9. But, in the apple, two new tricks are played us. First, 

 in the brown skin of the ripe pip, we might imagine we saw 

 the part correspondent to the mahogany skin of the chestnut, 

 and therefore the inner coat of the husk. But it is not so. 

 The brown skin of the pips belongs to them properly, and is 

 all their own. It is the true skin or sack of the seed. The 

 inner coat of the husk is the smooth, white, scaly part of the 

 core that holds them. 



Then, for trick number two. We should as naturally 

 imagine the skin of the apple, which we peel off, to be corre- 

 spondent to the skin of the peach ; and therefore, to be the 

 outer part of the husk. But not at all. The outer part of 

 the husk in the apple is melted away into the fruity mass of 

 it, and the red skin outside is the skin of its stalk t not of its 

 seed-vessel at all ! 



10. I say 'of its stalk,' that is to say, of the part of the 

 stalk immediately sustaining the seed, commonly called the 

 torus, and expanding into the calyx. In the apple, this torus 

 incorporates itself with the husk completely ; then refines its 

 own external skin, and colours that variously and beautifully, 

 like the true skin of the husk in the peach, while the withered 

 leaves of the calyx remain in the ' eye ' of the apple. 



