WHAT PLANTS DO FOR THEIR YOUNG. 1G9 



colour and sweet taste as do the flowers that 

 seek to attract insects. But just as almost any 

 part of the flower may be brightly coloured, so 

 almost any part of the fruit may be sweet and 

 pulpy. Thus we get an astonishing and rather 

 embarrassing variety of special devices in this 

 matter. 



A few instances must suffice us. In the 

 raspberry and blackberry the fruit consists of 

 separate carpels, in each of which the outer 

 coat becomes soft and sweet, while the actual 

 seed is hard and nut-like. In the one case the 

 fruit is red, in the other black, but very con- 

 spicuous among the green leaves in autumn. 

 These berries are eaten by birds, and their seeds 

 are dispersed in copse or hedgerow. But in the 

 strawberry, which is a near relation of both, 

 with a very similar flower, the actual carpels 

 remain to the end quite small and seed -like ; 

 they are the tiny black objects scattered about 

 in pits like miniature nuts over the surface of 

 the ripe berry. Here it is the common recep- 

 tacle of the fruit that swells'outf andT reddens, 

 the part answering to the central piece which 

 comes out whole in the middle of the raspberry ; 

 so that what we eat in the one fruit is the very \ 

 same part as what we throw away in the other. \ 

 In the plum, the cherry, and the peach, on the 

 other hand, there is but one carpel, and its outer 

 covering grows soft, sweet, and brightly coloured; 

 while the actual seed, though soft, is contained 

 in a hard and stony jacket, an inner layer of the 

 fruit coat. Here the true seed is what we call 

 the kernel, but it is amply protected by its bone- 



