SEPTEMBER FRUITS. 109 
on thistles. In some families the fruit in all the species 
has the same general character and gives the name to 
the family. The fruit of the bean and the pea is a 
legume, and the great family, Leguminose, to which 
they belong has this distinguishing mark, that the fruit 
is always a legume or pod, or a simple modification of 
it known as aloment. In Ralph’s “ Icones Carpologice”’ 
there are figures of four hundred species from two hun- 
dred genera of this one family, and they form an inter- 
esting subject for study. Pods of all shapes and of great 
diversity in size, from that of the tiny clover to that of 
Cassia Braziliana, Lam., an inch and three-quarters in 
diameter and a foot and a half long, are faithfully repre- 
sented. 
In other families there is a great difference in the 
kinds of fruit in the different genera. In the Rose family 
we have drupes or stone-fruits in the cherry, peach and 
plum; pomes in the apple, pear and quince; follicles, 
pods which open on one side only, in the meadow-sweet 
and its kindred; and akenes variously arranged in the 
rose, the strawberry, the blackberry, the avens and 
cinquefoil. 
The list of our September fruits, edible and inedible, 
palatable and unpalatable, is a long one, much longer in 
fact than anyone would suspect who had not made a 
collection of them. The profusion of bright-colored 
berries, where a little while before were summer flowers, 
