PHANEROGAMIA : FLOWERS. 439 



the fruit requires no further explanation, it is self-evident ; the product 

 is always given by the factor, though the reverse never. All that relates 

 to the form and composition of the fruit has, in a correct treatment of 

 the science, been already given under the head of the germen and its 

 developments ; therefore the peculiarity of the fruit does not at all lie 

 there, consequently none of this deserves special nomenclature. That an 

 inferior germen cannot become a superior fruit is self-evident ; and to 

 distinguish the fruit again on this account is wholly superfluous. It is 

 of more importance to state whether cells and seeds become abortive, or 

 whether spurious septa have been formed during the growth of the fruit. 

 On the other hand, the characteristic for the fruit and its essential 

 peculiarity are its structural conditions, and hence these alone merit a 

 peculiar nomenclature ; for instance, the inferior capsule must be dis- 

 tinguished from the inferior berry, but not the inferior from the superior 

 berry, since this latter character has already been given in the germen ; 

 and all that is additional in the fruit is the berry-like development of the 

 parenchymatous layers of the pericarp. 



Nowhere has purely diagrammatic comprehension been so prevalent 

 as in the theory of the fruit ; nowhere have botanists, starting from the 

 language of common life, and merely multiplying the words, taken so 

 little pains to define with scientific strictness ; and hence nowhere does 

 terminology so vacillate among all the definitions as in the fruit. One 

 assumes 10, another 15, a third 20, and another 40 or 50 kinds of fruit; 

 in short, the confusion is indescribable ; and if, according to the best 

 authorities, one explains to the scholar a drupe as a closed fruit, fleshy 

 externally and woody within, a capsule as a dehiscent, dry fruit, he finds, 

 in Reichenbach, for instance, not one single Labiate or Boragineous plant 

 described, since this author ascribes to these four drupes, and the four 

 drupes unite to form a capsule. 



I find the best exposition of this complicated subject in Lindley (Intro- 

 duction to Botany), who has at least sought to let in some light by 

 logical arrangement and strict definitions. Yet it is clear that the 

 existing wilderness of names, thrown together arbitrarily and under no 

 principles, is too much for the most straightforward inclination. The 

 only thing to be done is to throw away the whole mass, and begin the 

 investigation over again. 



We have almost as many systems of fruits as botanical writers. We 

 owe the first thorough research into fruits and seeds to Gartner (De 

 Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum, Stuttgart, 1788) and L.C.Richard 

 (Analyse du Fruit, Paris, 1808), whose works will remain classic for all 

 time. Subsequently to these, Mirbel, Dumortier, Desvaux, and others 

 have given Systems which, without essentially improving anything, 

 contain an innumerable quantity of new names, even for things long 

 before known and named. 



177. Taking the foregoing for our standard, we have now to 

 follow out particular points in the fruit. 1. We have to examine, 

 as portions of the fruit, the pericarp, the spermophore, the funicu- 

 lus, and the pulp ; then again, the seed, and in this the episperm 

 and the nucleus, and in this the embryo and the albumen. 



2. We have further to take account of the remaining parts that 

 stand in close relation to the fruit, from the bracts up to the parts 

 of the flower : these are accessory organs. 



F F 4 



