62 THE TREE BOOK 



ready in the little chamber. From this union 

 the cherry stone is formed. The juicy fruit 

 pulp or seed-case which surrounds it is "bait" 

 for bird and man. For the sake of the fruit 

 they scatter the stone, and so the race of cherry 

 trees is perpetuated. 



An ideal seed-case has three parts, the outer 

 skin, the pulp, and an inner skin to which the 

 seeds are fastened. All these may be plainly 

 seen in the fleshy pod of the lima bean. Here 

 is a seed box from the thorn locust, a forest 

 member of the bean family. It is a big brown 

 curled pod, about eight inches long by one inch 

 wide, with a seam all around it. There is a row 

 of little lumps along the pod showing the out- 

 line of the seeds inside. The lining is soft and 

 smooth and of a light brown color. There are 

 twenty seeds in the pod, each fastened in at the 

 seam like a little hinge. And how hard they 

 are ! It does not seem possible that they could 

 ever spring up into locust trees. 



Do you know these seeds with ona wing? 

 They belong to the ash tree. The seed from 

 the elm tree is very like these, only the wing is 

 more nearly oval in shape. Snap open one of 

 the long catalpa pods and see the many seeds 

 which it contains ride away on their filmy air- 

 ships. The seeds of the linden, too, are fur- 



