CHAP. II. 
FRUIT. 
221 
14. Of the Fruit. 
The fruit (figs. 136. to 168.) is the ovary or pistil arrived 
at maturity ; but, although this is the sense in which the term 
is strictly applied, yet in practice it is extended to whatever 
is combined with the ovary when ripe. Thus the pine-apple 
fruit consists of a mass of bracts, calyxes, corollas, and ovaries ; 
that of the nut, the acorn, and many others, of the superior 
dry calyx and ovary ; that of the apple of a succulent su- 
perior calyx, corolla, and ovary ; and that of the strawberry- 
blite of a succulent inferior calyx and dry ovary. 
The fruit being the matured ovary, it should exhibit upon 
some part of its surface the traces of a style or stigma ; and 
this mark will, in many cases, enable the student to distin- 
guish minute fruits from seeds. Many fruits were formerly 
called naked seeds, such as those of Apiacese, Labiatae, and 
Boraginaceae, and the grain of corn ; but, now that atten- 
tion has been paid to the gradual developement of organs, 
such errors have been corrected. In cases where a trace of 
the style cannot be discovered, anatomy will generally show 
whether a minute body is a seed or fruit, by the presence, in 
the latter case, of two separable and obviously organically 
distinct coatings to the nucleus of the seed ; but in other 
cases, where the pericarp and the integuments of the seeds 
are combined in a single covering, and where no trace of 
style remains, as sometimes happens, nothing can be deter- 
mined as to the exact nature of a given body without following 
it back in its growth to its young state. This, however, may 
be stated, that naked seeds, properly so called, are not known 
to exist in more than three or four orders in the whole vege- 
table kingdom ; viz. in Coniferae and Cycadaceae, where the 
ovules also are naked, and in Peliosanthes Teta and Leontice, 
in which the ovules, originally enclosed in an ovary, rupture 
it at an early period after fertilisation, and subsequently con- 
tinue naked until they become seeds. 
Such being the case, it follows that all the laws of structure 
which exist in the ovary are equally to be expected in the 
fruit ; and this fact renders a repetition in this place of the 
general laws of formation unnecessary. Nevertheless, as, in 
