PHANEROGAMIA : FLOWERS. 437 



Fig as the fruit, we have nothing to object ; but if the botanist assumes 

 the peasant's style of discrimination, he is far below the peasant : his 

 science should have taught him that edibility is no test of a part being 

 fruit. With the inconsistency thus introduced, a portion of those con- 

 ditions mentioned in the paragraph have been enumerated amongst fruits 

 according to common notions, while, in regard to another portion, it has 

 been correctly noticed that the fruit is surrounded with another part not 

 belonging to it, 



IV. Of the Fruit and the Seed. 



176. Fruit (fructus), in the scientific sense of the term, is the 

 single pistil at the time of the perfect formation of the embryo 

 (the maturity of the seed). The style and stigma, when they still 

 remain, retain their names, but the germen acquires that of peri- 

 carp. In this sense, there are of course some plants which have 

 no fruit, because they are not provided with a germen ; these, 

 therefore, must be described as naked seed-buds, and also naked 

 seeds (semina nuda) : to these belong the Coniferce, Cycadacece, and 

 Loranthacece. But there are also some particular plants in which 

 the germen is easily destroyed, so that the seed-bud is developed 

 in like manner without an envelope to the seed : these, in order 

 to distinguish them from the former, are termed semina denudata 

 (Leontice and Peliosanthes theta). The actual fruits may be divided, 

 according to the analogy of the flower, into naked and covered 

 (fructus nudus etfructus tectus), according as of the entire flower 

 only the germen appears to exist (as in Lilium\ or as this is 

 surrounded by other floral parts (as in Nicandra). According as 

 in a flower one or more pistils are developed, it is distinguished 

 as simple fruit (fructus simplex, as in Nigella) from the multiple 

 fruit (fructus multiplex, as in Ranunculus). Here, also, the ar- 

 rangement of the fruit is to be distinguished just as the inflo- 

 rescence was, and the same terminology may be retained (as fruit 

 spike, fruit capitulum, fruit umbel, &c.) ; or simply, as Linnaeus 

 spoke of the flower of the Composite, so here as a compound fruit 

 (fructus compositus), as in Ananas. 



All that has been said respecting the nature of the individual 

 germen, in reference to its origin, its composition, its interual 

 divisions, &c., holds good of course for each several fruit, unless 

 these conditions have been altered in the subsequent development 

 and progress towards maturity ; in which case such changes, but 

 only such changes, must receive names. 



The fruit may be defined in two ways, either as has been done in the 

 paragraphs, or, as some botanists have attempted, as the whole individual 

 flower at the time when the seed is ripe. It would be quite indifferent, 

 fundamentally, for science, which definition were established, if only one 

 actually were established : but the fact that not one single botanist has 

 carried out the conception of the fruit consistently with his own de- 

 finition has brought such confusion into the theory of the fruit, that, 



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