by the common burdock. Here, an involucre or common cup-shaped
receptacle of hooked bracts surrounds an entire head of purple tubular
flowers, and each of these flowers produces in time a distinct fruit;
but the hooked involucre contains the whole compound mass, and, being
pulled off bodily by a stray sheep or dog, effects the transference of
the composite lot at once to some fitting place for their germination.

Those plants, on the other hand, which depend rather, like London
hospitals, upon the voluntary system, produce that very familiar form
of edible capsule which we commonly call in the restricted 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