estricted sense a
fruit or berry. In such cases, the seed-vessel is usually swollen and
pulpy: it is stored with sweet juices to attract the birds or other
animal allies, and it is brightly coloured so as to advertise to their
eyes the presence of the alluring sugary foodstuff. These instances,
however, are now so familiar to everybody that I won't dwell upon them
at any length. Even the degenerate schoolboy of the present day, much
as he has declined from the high standard set forth by Macaulay, knows
all about the way the actual seed itself is covered (as in the plum or
the cherry) by a hard stony coat which 'resists the action of the
gastric juice' (so physiologists put it, with their usual frankness),
and thus passes undigested through the body of its swallower. All I
will do here, therefore, is to note very briefly that some edible
fruits, like the two just mentioned, as well as the apricot, the peach,
the nectarine, and the mango, consist of a single seed with its outer
covering; in others, as in the raspberry, the blackberry, the
cloudberry, and the dew-berry, many seeds are massed together, each
with a separate edible pulp; in yet others, as in the gooseberry, the
currant, the grape, and the whortleberry, several seeds are embedded
within the fruit in a common pulpy mass; and in others again, as in the
apple, pear, quince, and medlar, they are surrounded by a quantity of
spongy edible flesh. Indeed, the variety that prevails among fruits in
this respect almost defies classification: for sometimes, as in the
mulberry, the separate little fruits of several distinct flowers grow
together at last into a common berry: sometimes, as in a fig, the
general flower-stalk of several tiny one-seeded blossoms forms the
edible part: and sometimes, as in the strawberry, the true little nuts
or fruits appear as mere specks or dots on the bloated surface of the
swollen and overgrown stem, which forms the luscious morsel dear to the
human palate.

Yet in every case it is interesting to observe that, while the seeds
which depend for dispersion upon the breeze are easily detached from
the parent plant and blown about by every wind of doctrine, the seeds
or fruits which depend for their dispersion upon birds or animals
always, on the contrary, hang on to their native boughs to the very
last, till some unconscious friend pecks them off and devours them.
Haws, rose-hips, and holly-berries will wither and wilt on the tree in
mild wint