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 : 



The relative 

 weights of 

 pericarp and 

 seeds in 

 mature fruits 

 before drying 

 begins. 



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." 



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

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

 types of mature fruits before any withering or loss of weight 

 through drying occurs. In the following table the entire fruit 

 is taken as 100, the proportional weight of 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 



