438 MORPHOLOGY. 



increased still further by the want of knowledge of the germen, and the 

 baseless gossip about explanations of striking phenomena, it has become 

 a crux et horror to all who wish to devote themselves to the study of 

 Botany. 



It appears to me that the definition given in the paragraph, which 

 agrees with that of most botanists, although, indeed, without therefore 

 remaining true to itself, is the most to the purpose for the comprehension 

 of the matter ; besides, we should have no satisfactory word by which to 

 denominate this most essential part of the flower, continuously developed 

 up to the time when the seeds are ripe, if we applied the term fruit to 

 the whole flower at the epoch of maturity. It is indeed self-evident, 

 that botanists who have claims to scientific character may no longer 

 content themselves with statements like " pistillum unicum, stylus nul- 

 lus, stigma simplex" and the like, but that a minute exposition of the 

 rudimentary fruit, according to internal structure, number, and form of 

 seed-buds, &c., is indispensable. Then, however, a quantity of phrases 

 respecting the fruit become superfluous, which were formerly necessary, 

 and are still partially retained from custom. It evidently follows that, 

 putting out of the question the structural conditions, and the newly- 

 formed embryo and endosperm, the construction of the fruit is exactly 

 like that of the rudiment of it, and only requires especial notice when 

 important modifications have occurred through actual abortion of seed- 

 buds and entire cells. 



Two very different points of view must be both established and accu- 

 rately discriminated in the theory of the fruit, namely the scientific 

 condition and the empirical denomination of the fruit. These two so 

 wholly diverse respects have hitherto been completely confounded, and 

 thence in reference to the first far too little, to the second far too much, 

 has been done in the theory of the fruit. Here, also, this complication 

 of aspects has been historically carried forward ; and it is truly now time 

 that we gradually strip off the still adhering egg-shells of newly -hatched 

 science. It is indeed no long time since the more minute observation of 

 the construction of the germen was first commenced ; and so long as this 

 existed merely in rough outlines, much that ought properly to have been 

 previously mentioned necessarily came in as supplementary to the de- 

 scription of the fruit. That such patchwork does not go far, is, I think, 

 sufficiently shown by our systems of fruits with their incompleteness, 

 and yet at the same time with their arid waste of names and synonymes. 

 It is clear, also, that no attempt to understand the fruit from the mere 

 study of the ripe condition can succeed. The fruit is merely the final 

 result of a series of developments of the whole plant, the last product of 

 a great number of factors, and gives no conclusions about what has gone 

 before, about the number and nature of the co-operating factors. Thus 

 it has been attempted to deduce the number of parts forming the germen 

 from the number of valves : it was only necessary to call to mind the 

 capsula circumscissa, the lomentum and legumen, the loculicidal and 

 septifragal dehiscence, to see that original composition and subsequent 

 division stand in no necessary, but at most a very casual, connection. 

 Pains have been taken to refer the separate layers of the pericarp to the 

 layers of a leaf (carpel) : but, disregarding the circumstance that leaves 

 and pericarps do not universally exhibit layers, it is here most erro- 

 neously presupposed that every germen is composed of foliar organs, 

 &c. Now if the construction of the germen has been perfectly under- 

 stood, the gradual process of its development to fruit been comprehended, 



