256 STUDIES IN SEEDS AND FRUITS 



accompanied or not by dehiscence, seem to betoken a stage 

 that was not, if I may use the expression, in the original 

 plan laid down for nature. The biological connection being 

 severed with the parent plant, the fruit dies, but the seed lives. 

 There was a time, as I hold, in the age of vivipary, when 

 uniform climatic conditions prevailed, and the embryo was 

 already well advanced in germination and able to start life for 

 itself before the severance from the parent took place. In 

 later ages climatic differentiation has intervened, and the fruit 

 dies, leaving the embryo in all stages of arrested growth, with 

 the chances of its future development by no means assured. 

 The embryo is then dependent for its protection on the 

 hardening of its coverings, a process mainly accomplished after 

 the cord has withered, and in a fruit no longer drawing its 

 nutrient supplies from the parent, but practically dead. 



It is hard to detect anything but a baffled design when we 

 see nature suddenly withdrawing the plant's fostering care 

 over its offspring and leaving all to chance. It is difficult to 

 perceive any evidence of adaptation for dispersal in a rotting 

 apple ; but if my view is correct, the same should be true of 

 dehiscent fruits, the withering and opening of which, though 

 seemingly displaying more of method, are equally determined 

 by external influences of a haphazard kind. 



SUMMARY 



(1) The shrinkage of seeds in the moist berry affords a clue for 

 the comparison of fruits in their ripening stages, as illustrated by 

 Berberis (p. 241), Arum maculatum (p. 242), Tamus communis (p. 243), 

 and Passiflora (p. 244). Thus guided, we can trace the homologies in 

 the maturing and drying stages of very different types of fruits. This 

 shrinkage within the moist berry, which involves a loss of weight on 

 the average of from 10 to 15 per cent., represents but a small proportion 

 of the total loss which the seed sustains when exposed to the air or 

 dried with the fruit. 



(2) It is the shrinking of the seeds in the ripening berry that 

 comes to our aid in contrasting other fruits in their several stages of 

 maturation by enabling us to fix on a stage that is common to all. 



