296 



STUDIES IN SEEDS AND FRUITS 



the moist seed was too great and its estimated shrinkage exces- 

 sive, whilst it also appeared that in the dry fruit the pericarp is 

 as a rule rather heavier than the seed. The requisite correc- 

 tions were not great, but they brought the various results into 

 harmony, and the final statement accepted was as follows : — 



Such is an example of the method that has been usually 



employed, alike for the green coco-nut, weighing some sixty or 



seventy thousand grains, and for the small berries and pods of 



the Elder {Sambucus) and the Gorse ( Ulex), that weigh only two 



or three grains. Still, as I have before remarked, these results 



are all concerned with the drying fruit. The more I handle 



these " drying " data, which bulk very largely in my note-books 



and have taken up a considerable portion of the time occupied 



in the preparation of this work, the more my interest in them 



dwindles. Nature offers to us the living fruit, and it is there 



that the real biological interest lies. If she presents us also 



with the dead fruit — I am of course referring more particularly 



to the pericarp exclusive of the seeds — we ought to regard it 



much as a physician would regard a patient dying from natural 



decay, a process which in the fruit we should term " drying up." 



The relative I will now proceed to deal with the results of my observa- 



perifarp and tions on the weight-relations of the pericarp and seeds in various 



seeds^in^^_^ tyP^^ °^ mature fruits before any withering or loss of weight 



before drying through drying: occurs. In the following: table the entire fruit 

 begins. ..^ 1 -i-iru • ^ 



IS taken as 100, the proportional weight or the pericarp alone 



being given, that of the seeds representing the complement. 



This plan has been adopted with the object of letting the table 



tell its story by the aid of a single set of figures at the same time 



