258 PRACTICAL COURSE IN BOTANY 
has happened. The placentas are greatly enlarged and 
modified, and it may be necessary to refer to the diagram, 
Fig. 372, c, in order to make them out. How many locules, 
or chambers, are there in your specimen? How many 
placentas? Notice that these are central 
and double, but extend to the pericarp be- 
fore dividing so that they appear to be pa- 
rietal, and twice their real number, which 
¥ is only three. Are the seeds vertical, as in 
the apple, or horizontal? Look for the 
e —¢ — little stalk, or thread, that attaches them 
1G.372.—Cross 
section of gourd : c, one to the placenta. 
es ype Pepo is the name given by botanists to 
this kind of fruit. Write in your notebook 
a proper definition of it, from the specimens examined. 
291. The berry. — Examine a tomato, an eggplant, a 
grape, cranberry, lemon, or orange, in both cross and ver- 
tical section, and compare it with the melon and the apple. 
What differences and resemblances do you find? Cut a 
cross section, and draw, showing the attachment of the seeds. 
How many locules are there? Normally the tomato is a 
two-celled fruit, like the potato berry (Fig. 374), but it has 
been so modified by cultivation that 
the original plan is not always easy 
to distinguish. See if you can make 
it out. Do the seeds in your speci- 
men appear to be healthy and well 
developed, or are some of them small 
and aborted? How do you account 
for this? (285, 286.) What differ- Fias. 373, 374. — A potato 
ence do you notice in color between _ berry :373, exterior ; 374, cross 
the ripe and unripe fruit? Write a nee 
definition of the berry from the study you have made of it. 
Berries are the commonest of all fleshy fruits, and the most 
variable and difficult to define. In general, any soft, pulpy, 
or juicy mass, like the grape and tomato, whether one or 
374 
