244 NATURE STUDIES. 



the same to the beetle as to us, the nature of its 

 life is very different. It acts like a piece of 

 clock-work mechanism, wound up to perform a 

 certain number of fixed movements, and incapable 

 of ever going beyond the narrow circle for which 

 it is designed* 



WHAT IS A GEAPE? 



BY GRANT ALLEN. 



THEY make a beautiful picture, these big English 

 hot-house black Hambros, with their purple bloom 

 and waxlike texture, clustered thickly together in 

 rich luxuriance on their slender and heavily- weigh ted 

 branching fruit-stalks. Indeed, we have now culti- 

 vated them to such a pitch of excellence, that their 

 old wild ancestors would hardly recognise them to-day 

 for members of the same original woodland family of 

 Oriental climbers. Yet, after all, we have only been 

 able to carry a little further, by careful selection and 

 tillage, the peculiarities which Nature had long since 

 produced in the primitive native stock. At best, man 

 can only develop more fully what the plant itself has 

 well begun. Our ornamental flowers are but the 

 handsomest chosen wild blossoms ; our cereals and 

 edible roots are but the starchiest wild seeds and 

 tubers ; and our garden fruits are but the pick of the 



