CHAPTER XIV 



THE PROPORTION OF PARTS IN FRUITS 



THE relation in weight between the pericarp and the seeds in 

 the different stages of a fruit's history now claims our attention. 

 This involves not merely a comparison of parts in the various 

 states, but a detailed examination of the shrinking process 

 which the moist, full-grown fruit has to undergo in entering 

 the air-dried state. 



Amongst the first questions that offer themselves in an Therespec- 

 investigation of this kind is that concerned with the respective o/moisrtan 

 values of the moist and dry fruit for such comparisons. The df y fruits - 

 moist condition is naturally the most important, since the 

 fruit-covering or pericarp and the seed are still actively 

 functioning, whilst in the dry condition the fruit-case is dead 

 and the seed has its vitality suspended. It is true that the 

 systematist often employs the last-named condition of the 

 fruit ; but he has been under the whip of necessity ; and if 

 by so doing he has at times confused the issues as regards the 

 homology of fruits, he has been constrained by the circumstances 

 of his investigation. Yet it behoves us all the more to keep 

 the living fruit always in our mind. By so doing we can best 

 hope to avoid those false analogies and deceptive contrivances 

 which are so apt to be accepted as adaptive when we deal 

 indiscriminately with dead and living fruits. 



The subject, however, is a very complex one, and Nature 

 herself does not always aid us by bringing the several processes 

 concerned in the maturation of fruits and seeds into a final 

 relation with each other. Thus, as already pointed out in 



293 



