312 FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



these instances the seeds are enclosed in a capsule, 

 which opens with a deciduous lid. When the cap- 

 sule is mature the lid falls off, and the seeds are dis- 

 persed. In a remote manner, if such a comparison 

 can be legitimately made, the hood, or cap, of the 

 theca, or capsule, in mosses falls off, and the spores 

 escape, except that they are subject to further reten- 

 tion, until a suitable season, by the incurved teeth of 

 the peristome. 



It is easy enough to comprehend the "wherefore" 

 of the monkey pots, and their movable lids, but it 

 is not so evident why, in similar trees of the same 

 family, the seeds should be enclosed in hard, woody 

 capsules, with no orifice, and from which there is no 

 escape, but by the decay of the thick envelope. Such 

 are the Brazil nuts of commerce {Bertholletia excelsd). 

 " The fruit, round like a cannon ball, and about the 

 size of a twenty-four pounder, is harder than the 

 hardest wood, and has to be battered to pieces with 

 the back of a hatchet to disclose the nuts. Any one 

 who has hammered at a Bertholletia fruit will be 

 ready to believe the story that the Indians, fond as 

 they are of the nuts, avoid the ' totocke ' trees till the 

 fruit has all fallen for fear of fractured skulls." x The 

 Capuchin monkeys, according to Humboldt, " are 

 singularly fond of these 'chestnuts of Brazil,' and 



1 Kingsley's " At Last " p. 276. 



