THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



73 



accomplished specialists. Surely the missionary spirit goes 

 with greatness and accompanies profound learning. The well 

 informed man is sure and speaks accordingly. The man who 

 refers me to an elementary text-book has himself need of 

 further information. — Edzmrd F. Bigelozv in Guide to Nature. 



Structure of the Fruit. — A fruit, regarded structurally, 

 is the part of the flower that persists after pollination has been 

 effected, that is to say, after the possible seeds have become reai 

 seeds. In most cases the fruit may be described as the ripe 

 seed-boxes, or as a collection of ripe seed-boxes, with or with- 

 out extra parts such as the fleshy top of the flowerstalk or a 

 persistent calyx. In many cases, as in common cereals where 

 a single seed fills the seed-box, fruit and seeds are practically 

 identical, though the theoretical difference remains clear. In 

 order to understand the different kinds of fruits, which repre- 

 sent solutions of a very difficult problem, we must also notice 

 that the wall of the fruit (the pericarp) often consists of several 

 layers very different from one another. Thus in the familiar 

 case of the plum there is the firm outside skin (epicarp) which 

 keeps bacteria and moulds out until it gets even a slight wouncl ; 

 there is the fleshy pulp (mesocarp), which is all loss to the 

 parent plant, but attracts the birds which scatter the seeds ; and 

 there is the very hard ''stone" (endocarp), which effectively 

 preserves the seed within — a living embryo — from being 

 digested in the bird's food canal, from being frostbitten in the 

 ground, from premature germination and from other risks. — 

 From Thomsons ''Biology of the Seasons/' 



Late Blooming Lupine. — It is interesting to record the 

 fact that the common Lupine (Lupinus perennis) of the dune 

 region of northern Indiana, like some of our violets, occasion- 

 ally blossoms in the fall. On September 1, 1912, I found a 

 specimen in bloom near Hammond, Indiana. Whether the 

 plant was blooming for the second time or had just come into 

 flower for the first, I was unable to ascertain. This particular 



