Evolution tn the Orchards. 23 
but has been in many other ways civilised and refined. Now, our 
word culture, as applied to people of a long line of educated 
generations, is a word borrowed from tree-growing and _ plant- 
growing. A tree is cultivated, that is, educated, by man’s wisdom 
and skill. Asa matter of fact, nature never quite forgets what 
she has once done. She likes to rehearse, just as we like to tell 
what we did when children. The frog never gets to be a frog 
until he has gone over his ancestral history as a tadpole. So the 
pear, if you sow the seed of a Sheldon, runs back to its way of 
doing 10,000 years ago; only it may be that one seed in a hun- 
dred will tell the other story of progress. | But the apple has very 
much less of this propensity to far backward looking. It is quite 
settled down to be content with civilisation, and has even forgotten 
a good deal of what it once knew. 
Now, we know that the great rose family, including pear, apple, 
quince, plum, almond, peach, apricot, rose, strawberry, and black- 
berry, is peculiar in this, that it has developed a power to bribe 
insects and animals to do it some sort of service ; for that really 
is what the strawberry and the apple and the other edible seeds 
are. They are temptations to induce the birds to eat them and so 
carry the seed about and sow them, and in that way enable them 
to spread and multiply. This bribing family never appeared on the 
earth until fruit-eating birds appeared—that is, the fruit-eating birds 
and the fruits for them to eat were created by evolution together. 
But, while it was a part of the business of these trees to get their 
fruits eaten, it was equally a part of their business not to get 
eaten themselves, therefore thorns were quite as necessary as nice 
apples and berries. The seeds evolved a power to swell out into 
receptacles of a pulp and juice agreeable to the birds, but they pro- 
tected themselves against the browsing of animals as vigorously as 
they welcomed their feathered friends. The raspberry puffed out 
the whole ovary ; the strawberry the seeds and ovary both. There 
was but one exception in the family to the thorn-producing. The 
strawberry or potentillas, nestling close to the ground, got a habit 
of running away from enemies and hiding, and so did not need to 
barb the noses of intruders. 
And this went on after a simple sort for thousands of years. 
Strawberries, however, were but little more than dry seeds; and 
apples were only haws and other very insignificant things. But 
by and by man appeared on the scene, and though he at first had 
but little more taste than the other animals, he had just one thing 
more, a power to educate his taste. And as he educated his taste 
he took the rose family out of the hands of nature and began to 
educate that too; just as he began to educate the wild beasts and 
make them tame ones. It was slow work, both with himself and 
with his pupils. All the steps we can’t trace. But here we both 
