A Family History. 217 



known fruit, the cherry, as our prime example of the 

 whole class. 



The cherry, like the strawberry, is an eatable 

 fruit. But while in the strawberry we saw that the 

 pulpy part consisted of the swollen stalk or recep- 

 tacle, in which several small dry seeds were loosely 

 embedded, with the cherry the pulpy part consists of 

 the outer coat of the fruit or seed vessel itself, which 

 has grown soft and juicy instead of remaining hard 

 and dry. In this respect the cherry resembles a 

 single grain from a raspberry ; but from the raspberry, 

 again, it differs in the fact that each flower produces 

 only a single solitary one-seeded fruit, instead of pro- 

 ducing a number of little fruits, all arranged together 

 in a sort of thimble. In the raspberry flower, when 

 blossoming, you will find in the centre several separate 

 carpels or fruit-pieces ; in the cherry you will find 

 only one. The cherry, in fact, may (so far as its fruit 

 is concerned) be likened to a raspberry in which all 

 the carpels or fruit-pieces except one have become 

 aborted. And the reason for the change is simply 

 this : cherry bushes (for in a wild state they are 

 hardly trees) are longer-lived plants than the bramble 

 kind, and bear many more blossoms on each bush. 

 Hence one seed to every blossom is quite as many as 



they require to keep up the numbers of the species. 

 15 



