FRUIT. 29 



pistil bags, but they are enclosed in the calyx tube, 

 which swells out all round them into the soft part 

 which you like to eat. The pistil or seed bags are 

 those scaly leaves in the middle, which we call the 

 core (Fig. 25). 



If we pass through a wood, we may find some 

 wild raspberries (Fig. 22). But here is another fruit 

 of the same kind, the common blackberry. You see, 

 again, a heap of separate pistil bags, as in the 

 buttercup, only in the blackberry the bags swell and 

 grow soft and pulpy. The little beak is a fine hair, 

 and often remains visible when the fruit is ripe. 



Can we find a wild cherry, or a sloe, or wild damson ? 

 These are plants with only one pistil or seed bag instead 

 of many. So their fruit is like one of the pulpy bags 

 we have been looking at in the raspberry or black- 

 berry. It is so much larger that you see better how 

 it is made up. First a soft skin. How beautifully it 

 is coloured ! And you can think of the yellow 

 apricots, blue and purple plums, and bright red 

 cherries. Then the juicy pulp. In the middle the 

 hard shell we call it the stone of the fruit. Inside 

 all, the seed, or, as we say, the kernel. 



If we can find a nutbush, with some fruit on it, we 

 shall have another instance of a fruit with a single 

 pistil or seed bag. But in the nut the outside skin of 

 the bag has become hard and brown. The shell 

 covers and keeps safe the seed or kernel. 



