242 AUTUMNAL FLOWERS 



would show a nicer discrimination in their use of 

 polysyllables; but Linnaeus must have been in a 

 waggish mood when he named the strawberry trees 

 Arbutus unedo, that is, unum edo, I eat one and no 

 more, thank you ! Many a child has proved the fitness 

 of that appellation by the grimace which follows the 

 experiment of tasting one of these berries of delicious 

 appearance. Nature, it may be presumed, in her 

 supreme solicitude for the perpetuation of every species, 

 gives certain fruits an attractive exterior so that 

 animals may be tempted to take them, and so distri- 

 bute the enclosed seeds in likely places ; but so long as 

 her object is attained, she seems pretty indifferent 

 to what benefit her ministers may derive from their 

 function. The pulp of a gooseberry or a strawberry 

 is sweet and palatable; the biped, feathered or un- 

 feathered, who gathers such berries is made welcome 

 to tickle his palate with the contents ; but that is not 

 Nature's prime purpose. She wants the seeds to be 

 scattered far and wide, a result which, in the case of the 

 arbutus, is attained almost as surely by tempting 

 children to gather the pretty berries, which they are 

 sure to throw away so soon as they have tasted one. 



To a very different natural order belongs another 

 shrub, invaluable at this season, one of the Loganiacece 

 or Strychnine family. It has no English name, worse 

 luck, and has to answer to that of Desfontainea 

 spinosa. When out of flower most people take it for 

 a holly, an illusion which is sharply dispelled when, 

 in July and August, it clothes itself with brilliant 

 scarlet and yellow tubular flowers. Like so many 



