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THE CANADIAN JOURNAL 
NEW SERIES. 
No. XXXVI.—NOVEMBER, 1861. 
AN ATTEMPT AT AN IMPROVED CLASSIFICATION 
OF FRUITS. 
BY WILLIAM HINCKS, F.L.S., ETC., 
PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, TORONTO, 
Read before the Canadian Institute, April 6th, 1861. 
In the course of my botanical labours, both as a teacher and a 
student of scientific characters, I have strongly felt the importance of 
great accuracy in the definition of the different kinds of fruits,—in 
reference not to mere external marks, but to their real nature and 
structural constitution. My acquaintance with a very great number 
of botanical treatises, has not yet introduced me to any arrangement 
entirely satisfactory to my mind; I have, therefore, made an attempt 
to supply the deficiency, which I lay before the Institute as a slight 
contribution to practical science, which can be best appreciated by 
those most immediately engaged in this class of studies. 
I premise that the gynccium, the germ-producing part of the 
flower—like the andreeceum, the corolla, and the calyx—consists of 
one or more circles of similar organs, each of which is in its essential 
nature a leaf modified in its development, as is abundantly proved by 
analogical reasoning and by monstrosities. In the case of the gync- 
cium, each distinct organ is called a carpel (carpellum), its tip being 
the stigma; its elongated extremity, when present, the style; and 
the germs being produced in some definite relation to it, most usually 
Vou. VI. 2M 
