There is the most extraordinary range in colour. The Snowberry and Dwarf Cornel are pure white. The Mistletoe is a yellowish green. Pure yellow fruits are not common, but some of the Cucumber orders and Lemons are lemon or orange-yellow. The bluish-black of the Blaeberry or Bilberry, of the Bramble, and of many Plums and Prunes, goes along with a rather peculiar shade of green in the leaves which sets them off. The black Elder berries, on the other hand, have bright red or pink stalks which contrast prettily with them. The colours of apples vary: many of them have been rendered a gorgeous, glossy red through cultivation. One of the most beautiful colour contrasts in Nature is found in the rich black of the Olive, with its background of shining white twigs and silver-green leaves. Another very curious harmony is that of the Spindle tree fruit, which has a hard dull red case that opens to display the seeds: these are enclosed in a bright orange fleshy cup.

Changes often occur. The Lily of the Valley fruit is at first green, then becomes flecked with red, and finally is a rich scarlet. Juniper berries change from green to purple.

Now there is always some meaning in Nature for any series of facts such as these. Why are these fruits so brightly coloured and so conspicuous?

Birds and other animals are intended to scatter the fruits and seeds, and so the fruits must be easily distinguished at a distance. The seeds are taken to some other place, where they germinate and form a new plant. This furnishes the clue and guide to many other peculiarities in fruits and seeds.

The pleasant smell of ripe apples, plums, strawberries, and other fruits, also attracts birds and other animals. But the sugary juice and delicious flesh is developed entirely for the purpose of making it worth a bird's while to eat it. The amount of sugary matter is enormous, and the seeds seem very small and inconspicuous compared with this luscious mass. The sugar is produced very rapidly towards the end of the ripening period.

A Cucurbita fruit, for instance, may increase in weight at the rate of·0032 ounce per minute. All who have gathered strawberries know how quickly they ripen.

The way in which the sugar is formed is not understood, but unripe fruits contain bitter, unwholesome acids and essences which may produce colic or very unpleasant effects if the fruits are eaten green. Thus the colour is a guide to the animal, who is not supposed to eat the fruit until it is ripe; if eaten green, the seeds inside the fruit are quite destroyed and cannot germinate. Yet animals are so greedy that young birds, young animals of all sorts (even girls and boys) will and do eat green or half-ripe fruit. In this present year there is no doubt that many children have suffered for having done this. Yet if we come to think of it, throughout all the millions of years during which fruits have ripened, Nature has every year clearly told young pterodactyls and other lizards, young birds, young monkeys, and young people to wait till the fruit is ripe. None of them have learnt to do so.

When investigating by experiment, on the vile body, the properties of plums, strawberries, and other fruits, you are sure to find here and there one that has decayed and become rotten. In most cases this is because a bird has pecked a hole in it, or because the outside skin has been broken by a wasp. The sugar has then begun to ferment. Why does it do so?

If you gather a few fruits, put them into a jar of sugar-water, and leave it after closing the mouth with a bunch of cotton wool, then in a day or two fermentation begins and alcohol is produced. That is because, on the outside of the fruit, there were hundreds of an objectionable little fungus. It lives upon sugar and turns the latter into alcohol. This yeast fungus is really a living distillery. It lives in the midst of alcohol all its life, dying eventually (like the Duke of Clarence in his butt of Malmsey wine) by alcoholic poisoning, which it has brought about by its own work. This little yeast fungus can only be seen with a microscope. From a rotten fruit it drops on to the ground, where it remains all winter. Next spring certain small insects (green-fly and the like) carry some of these yeasts from the earth to next year's fruits. But the skin of the plum or apple, or the hairs on a gooseberry, or the delicate, waxy bloom on a grape, will prevent these insects or wasps from laying open the sugar inside the fruit to the attacks of yeasts and other fermenting fungi.

Some fruits appear to have "favourites"; they seem to prefer that large animals should eat them. If you look carefully at a piece of orange peel, and cut a small piece across, you will see distinctly small resin pits full of a curious essence which gives the characteristic taste to marmalade. This bitter stuff will prevent wasps from touching the sugar. It is, however, a valuable material, and some kinds of lemons, etc., are grown chiefly for this oil, which is obtained by scraping the peel with a little saucer which is studded with short pins.

A still more extraordinary fruit is the prickly pear; this is very delicious though very difficult to eat. Indeed, only monkeys and man seem able to enjoy it. The sugary part and the seeds form a little round mass in the inside. The outside part, though also fleshy, contains hundreds of minute mineral needles, which stick in the tongue and lips and cause most painful inflammation. The monkey eats the prickly pear with very great caution, getting his fingers into the top and scooping out the sugary part. Man requires a teaspoon to do this satisfactorily.

Another very curious point about these fleshy fruits (and also ordinary ones) is the strength of the seed inside. It does not look very strong.

But an orange seed, for instance, will not be in the least injured if you put it between two glass plates and gradually press upon the upper one up to even a pressure of some thirty pounds. Even hemp seed, which seems quite weak, will endure a weight of four pounds. It is impossible to break a prune stone, or to injure a date stone, by standing with your whole weight upon it.

Such strength is necessary because many of these seeds are eaten by birds and ground up in their crops with bits of china, stones, shells, and the like, which the birds pick up just to help them in crushing their food.

Fruits and seeds would seem to be exposed to some danger when they are lying on the ground. Horses or other heavy animals might tread on them. But the strength of seeds and their shape is such that no harm is likely to accrue. For instance, I arranged a thin layer of garden earth (a quarter of an inch thick) on a glass plate; upon the earth I placed four hemp seeds; then I put a 58-lb. weight on the top of the seeds. They were not in the least injured, although the seed of the hemp is not a particularly tough one. Under such conditions the seed simply slips into the earth.

This is made easy for it on account of its shape, which is generally rounded above and below. A transverse section of a seed would be in shape like the arch of a bridge and its shadow in the water, at least in many cases. There are also usually wonderfully thickened cells in the shell or coat of a seed, which makes it tough and strong.

The following are a few cases of strong seeds or fruits:—Cotton seed bears a weight of 19 to 20 lb.; the hard fruits of the Dogrose, 33 lb.; Castor-oil seed, 17 lb.; Hornbeam nuts, 27 lb.; Pine seed (various sorts), from 11 to 22 lb.; Yew seeds, 16 lb.; Peas, 50 to 56 lb. In every case they are not at all hurt by these pressures.

As regards the animals for whom fruit or seeds are of great importance, birds are of course the commonest. The following is part of the bill-of-fare of a few of our common birds:—Thrushes eat blaeberries (bilberries), brambles and mulberries. Missel-thrush (or mavis) is especially fond of the mistletoe.

Now the berry of the mistletoe is exceedingly sticky and glutinous, and in the course of the bird's meal these sticky strings get on to the bill and feathers, so that the mavis wipes its bill on the branch of a tree. When it does so the seed becomes attached to the branch, and is drawn close to the latter when the viscous matter dries up, and so takes root on the branch.

Nightingales and robins eat strawberries and elderberries; blackbirds are very fond of strawberries, gooseberries, and raspberries. Wood-pigeons eat beechmast, acorns, and, according to Pliny, mistletoe-berries also, but this latter author has not been confirmed by later observers. Some of the wild African pigeons are exceedingly fond of castor-oil seeds. When travelling through the Central African bush, it is often necessary to shoot your dinner (if you are to have any at all), and castor-oil bushes can be relied upon to produce pigeons, if you are content with and are able to shoot them.

There is a widely-spread belief in the country that a great quantity of berries means that a very severe winter is going to follow. But as a matter of fact the winter of 1904 was not a severe one, and yet there were enormous quantities of berries.

We are still ignorant of many details about birds and berries. It is not quite clear how the seeds are not destroyed, though experiments have shown that they are not injured, by passing through the body of a bird. Kerner von Marilaun, for instance, tried the fruits and seeds of 250 different plants which were offered to seventeen birds, as well as to marmots, horses, cattle, and pigs. He found that from seventy-five to eighty-eight per cent. of the seeds germinated afterwards so far as regards the blackbird, song-thrush, rock-thrush, and robin. Quail also bring seeds from Greece and the Ionian Islands to Sicily.

Mr. Clement Reid says: "Some years ago I found ... in an old chalk-pit the remains of a wood-pigeon which had met with some accident. Its crop was full of broad-beans, all of which were growing well, though under ordinary circumstances they would have been digested and destroyed."[111] Such accidents are common.

But it is not only birds which eat fleshy fruits and seeds. Even the tiny, industrious ant drags about seeds of certain plants. Sometimes they gather up corn or grasses, such as ant-rice, and store them for use in winter. They even bite off the growing root to prevent the seeds germinating and spoiling. Occasionally they seem to carry the seeds by accident, as, for example, those of the cow-wheat and a few others which resemble their cocoons in size, colour, and form. In other cases there is a little fleshy excrescence on the seed which they are fond of eating. Cyclamen, snowdrop, violet, and periwinkle seeds are supposed to be carried in this way. Many animals occasionally or regularly eat fruits. There are, for instance, the flying-foxes or fruit-eating bats of Madagascar and tropical countries, which may be seen hanging from the upper branches of trees by their toes, with their heads tucked away under their wings. When disturbed a little fox-like head appears, and after much chattering, scolding, and expostulation, the creature unhooks itself and flies away with a strong flight not unlike that of a crow. Horses are occasionally fed on peaches in Chile. Rats eat the coffee cherry, and do a great deal of harm in coffee plantations.

In Cashmir the mulberry and other fruit trees are sometimes visited by sportsmen, who often find bears feeding on the fruits. Pigs, of course, eat all sorts of fruit, and several other mammals do the same, but it is especially monkeys that live chiefly on fruit. They plunder the banana plantations, and in South Africa melon-patches require to be most carefully watched to prevent baboons from destroying them.

It is said that the baboons watch the plantations from a distance, and will only come down if they think no one is there: so five people walk to the patch, and while four go away again, one of them remains in hiding to shoot the baboons, who cannot tell the difference between four and five.

Man himself is, and has always been, a great eater of fruit. Not only so, but he has enormously improved and altered wild fruits until they are modified into monsters of the most extraordinary kind. The ordinary wild gooseberry weighs about 5 dwt. But even in the year 1786 some of the cultivated forms weighed double this amount (10 dwt.), and in 1852 gooseberries which weighed more than 37 dwt. were in existence. What size the largest big gooseberry may be this year is not very easy to say, because the public Press is at slack times too energetic about the question. The most usual way of improving fruits is by selecting the finest specimens for reproduction. It is by this means that the original wild banana, which is a rather small fruit with very large seeds and very little flesh, has been altered into something like 150 varieties, of which the immense majority have no seed at all. This is a very extraordinary fact, because the seed is the reason for the existence of the fruit. Of course, all such varieties must be reproduced by suckers (like the banana) or by grafts, or in some such non-sexual manner. Seedless varieties exist of the Cucumber, Fig, German Medlar, Diospyros, and Orange.

In the case of seedless varieties of the Vine, it has been found that it is necessary to carry pollen to the flowers to fertilize them, and the seedless fruit is also very much smaller in this case, not more than a quarter of the size of one that has seeds.

The following instance is typical of the manner in which many well-known kinds of fruit have been developed, though the perseverance shown by Mr. Gideon is certainly not common. About the year 1855 this gentleman began planting apple trees of about thirty named varieties. For nine years he continued his experiments. He not only planted trees, but also sowed apple seed sufficient to produce a thousand trees every year. Yet the cold winters were so severe that at the end of ten years one small seedling crab apple was the solitary survivor. One seedling of this turned out to be hardy enough for the climate of Minnesota, and this, the "wealthy" apple, has been of great importance to the Northern Mississippi growers. It is to be hoped that the name has been justified in Mr. Gideon's case.

Many other cases could be mentioned of a chance variety produced as a wild plant, and then propagated non-sexually for long periods, e.g. the New Rochelle Bramble, which was found by the roadside, and which turned out to be exceedingly valuable. It is by crossing or hybridizing that the most extraordinary results have been obtained. Sometimes with plums, the hybrids of the first generation are nearly double the size of their parents. Some of the crosses are between different plants. The Loganberry, for instance, is said to be a cross between a Raspberry and a Bramble. It ripens in July, and is said to be far in advance of either of its parents as regards juiciness and acidity.

In most cases, however, the crosses are between well-established varieties or races of the same species, and both hybridizing and selection are employed to get the desired result.

There are several tropical fruits which, with the possible exception of wheat and oats, are more important to mankind than anything else. The Breadfruit (Artocarpus incisus), which is very common in the South Sea Islands, has a large fruit the size of a melon. When baked in an oven heated by hot stones, it forms a satisfying meal: it is rather like new bread, but has very little flavour. Coarse cloth is made of its bark, and the wood is used as timber. The tree also has a milky juice containing indiarubber, and is employed for caulking the canoes. The most interesting point for botanists about this plant is that the fruit is made up of thousands of little flowers, and the fleshy part is really the stalk. Fossil trees of this genus (of the chalk period) are found in some parts of Europe.

Still more important to mankind is the Banana (Musa paradisiaca). It is wheat, corn, and potatoes all in one, in tropical and sub-tropical countries. It is found all over the world wherever there is a hot, moist climate and shelter from wind. It is a most generous plant as regards the amount which it will produce. It will yield about 19-1/2 tons of dry fruit on a single acre, which is about forty-four times the amount given by potatoes and 133 times that of wheat. Moreover, it differs from almost every other fruit in being both "rice and prunes," that is, it is nutritious and wholesome, and yet at the same time succulent. There are still people who declare that the taste is that of "cotton wool and Windsor soap," but that is a frivolous and unjust remark. It is very difficult to prepare it exactly in the right way for export to Great Britain, and the slightest change in temperature or period of gathering has the most distressing results.

As with many other tropical fruits, the countries where it is most carefully produced and where the trade is most important are just on the borders of the tropics. There Europeans can keep enough vigour and vitality to supervise and watch over the labour of natives. It is in the Canary Islands, Queensland,[112] and Jamaica that the cultivation is most carefully looked after. The yield may be from five hundred to a thousand bunches per acre, and the value of the trade is enormous. A plantation is not very beautiful, because the huge leaves break up into irregular, ragged pieces which look untidy. The flowers are visited by the beautiful little honey-sucking sunbirds and humming-birds. Monkeys also are very fond of the fruit.

In the tropics it grows everywhere, and with extremely little trouble. It is a doubtful blessing to the negroes, for they get their food so easily that they tend to become incorrigibly lazy. Jam, champagne, brandy, and meal can be made from the banana. When this meal can be prepared satisfactorily, it may partly replace wheat in temperate countries. Besides this, the leaves are used for thatching, and the stalks which make the stem contain a valuable fibre which is used for string and rope.

In Egypt and all along the great deserts of Sahara and Asia the graceful stately Date palm gives the favourite food of the people (see Chap. X.).

The Arabs grind up the stones to make food for camels, and sometimes ferment the sap to make toddy. The trees are either male or female. The Arabs knew that it was necessary to pollinate the female flowers with male pollen long before the meaning of the process was realized in Europe.

The Fig, a native of the Persian Gulf, is cultivated all along the Mediterranean and in India, Australia, and California. It is sometimes fifteen to thirty feet high, and reaches a very great age. There is one at Finisterre said to be several centuries old. It yields fruit worth about £14 an acre. The most interesting point about the Fig is the way in which the Fig-wasp carries the pollen (see Chap. V.).

Olives are also one of the most important and characteristic Mediterranean trees. The crop in both Spain and Italy is worth about £8,000,000 to £9,000,000 annually. In California it is also successfully cultivated, and pays very well. The peculiar taste of the dessert olive is obtained by soaking it in lime or potash, and then in vinegar or salt.

The Pineapple is one of the most delicious fruits, and is interesting in every way. The little sharp spines on the edges of the leaves keep animals off, and also make it a little difficult to harvest. The workmen must wear leather trousers to prevent their being cut and torn by the leaves. In Queensland the pineapple is grown in big fields, and about ten thousand fruits (worth about one penny each) can be got from a single acre. It is also grown in the West Indies, in India, and in other tropical countries. If you examine the horny outside skin of the fruit with a sharp penknife, you will find that each little piece of the mosaic is a flower in itself; with a little care the bracts, three sepals, three petals, and six stamens can be distinguished. The whole stem and all its flowers unite to make a compound fruit. Most varieties have no seeds. It is a native of South America.

It is, however, our home fruits, Apples, Pears, Gooseberries, Strawberries, Raspberries, and Currants, that are most important to us in Britain. The Wild Crab Apple is found from Drontheim, in Norway, to the Caucasus, and grows over the whole of Europe. Apples were known to the Greeks and Romans.

Unfortunately, in our own climate there are great dangers in the orchard. A touch of frost when the flowers are ripe will very likely kill the tender, green, baby apple. It is perhaps in Canada and North America that the growing of apples and pears is most carefully looked after. Our beautiful old orchards in Devonshire and other places, with comfortable grass below the trees, and moss-covered, picturesque, ancient trunks, are not found in the New World. The regular lines of young trees in bare, carefully-kept earth, with every stem whitewashed and treated with the most scientific monotony, produce a most valuable return. But in this country those who are careful and scientific sometimes obtain extraordinary results. It is on record that a man with a holding of twenty-nine acres near Birmingham made £600 a year from this small plot and paid £250 for labour on it.[113]

Mr. Gladstone also said that the future of British farmers depended upon jam. Yet it must be remembered that the trees take a long time to come into bearing, and the crop is most uncertain.

CHAPTER XX
WANDERING FRUITS AND SEEDS

Ships and stowaway seeds—Tidal drift—Sheep, broom, migrating birds—Crows and acorns—Ice—Squirrels—Long flight of birds—Seeds in mud—Martynia and lions—The wanderings of Xanthium—Cocoanut and South Sea Islands—Sedges and floods—Lichens of Arctic and Antarctic—Manna of Bible—The Tumble weeds of America—Catapult and sling fruits—Cow parsnips—Parachutes, shuttlecocks, and kites—Cotton—The use of hairs and wings—Monkey's Dinner-bell—Sheep-killing grasses.

THE ways in which fruits and seeds are scattered abroad over the face of the earth form one of the most fascinating chapters in the story of Plant Life.

There is an infinite number of ingenious contrivances, so many indeed that it is not at all easy to explain them.

However, suppose yourself seated on a grassy cliff near Eastbourne or Brighton.

Looking lazily out over the blue waters, you see Norwegian timber ships and steamers of all kinds, from the little coasting "Puffing Billy" to the huge liner departing for Australia or South Africa.

Plants are probably using every steamer; in the straw of the packing cases, in the cargoes of corn or grain, in the ore, and in the ballast, there are sure to be seeds. Such stowaways are mostly weeds, but of course many valuable garden, farm, orchard, and forest seeds are being intentionally exported.

Looking down on the seashore, you will notice the high-water mark, a yellowish brown line of floated rubbish which is quite distinct even at a distance. If you now go down and examine it closely (not a particularly pleasant operation, seeing that so much is in a decomposing condition) you will find many seeds amongst the corks and bits of straw, seaweed, and objectionable, if lively, animalcula, and very likely also pieces of plants, such as willow branches, which might quite easily take root.

On the coast of Norway, and on our own western seaboard, the fruits of a West Indian bean (Entada scandens) are occasionally to be found, and its seeds are probably able to germinate. We know that in long-past geological ages they were floating round the estuary of the Thames, where they occur as fossils. It has been found by experiment that fruits and seeds are not killed although they have floated for a year or more in salt water. Thus ocean currents are utilized to carry fruits and seeds.

But from our comfortable seat on the South Downs, still more can be learnt of wandering seeds. The wind which blows across the downs carries with it hundreds of winged or hairy fruits, all of them exquisitely fashioned as miniature airships, aeroplanes, or other winged contrivances. The wind is an important distributer of seeds.

One of the South Down sheep is trailing behind it a piece of bramble which has caught in its wool; others, which have been grazing on the broken cliff-edge where Agrimony, Forget-me-not, and Burdock are flourishing, are certain to have spiny or sticky fruits entangled in their wool. Animals therefore carry seeds in their wool or fur. If it should happen to be a fine, sunny afternoon, and if there are any plants of Broom near by, it is quite likely that you may, every now and then, hear a faint, sudden crack. This will be the Broom at work scattering its seeds by itself. The little pod, when it dries, contracts in such a way that it splits with a sudden explosive pop, and the seeds are sent flying to a distance of three or four feet. This curious fact was observed in 1546 by the naturalist Boek. The Whin and many other plants act in the same way, for the dry fruit becomes elastic and coils up spirally, flinging away the seed.

But here also, on the southern shore of England, we are at a main station of arrival and departure for migrating birds. A Landrail or other marsh bird might be flushed in France, and might quite easily cross the Channel with French mud sticking to its plumage. In this mud, or in its crop, there may be seeds or fruits which will be left in an English pond. This method is probably a very important one, for these plants growing in duck-haunted places are amongst the most widely distributed of all.

Mr. Reid has a very interesting discussion on this point. The crow or rook could quite well cross the British Channel now. In the days when Britain was covered with ice and snow, the gap between the French and the English shore was only half the present width. There was at that time much flat land with oak forest bordering the French coast.

Mr. Reid shows that it is probable that rooks regularly carry about acorns in the cup, for he found seedling oaks associated with empty acorn husks, stabbed and torn in a peculiar way. "On October 29th of 1895, in the middle of an extensive field, bordered by an oak copse and scattered trees, I saw a flock of rooks feeding and passing singly backwards and forwards to the oaks. On driving the birds away, and walking to the middle of the field I found hundreds of empty acorn husks and a number of half-eaten, pecked acorns."[114] So that crows may have brought the acorns that colonized Britain with oak forest in the earliest historical period.

Another means of dispersal is not so obvious on the South Downs. In the Arctic region a glacier breaks away at its tongue into icebergs, which float off and are stranded somewhere perhaps hundreds of miles distant. Upon these icebergs are stones and soil and plants which may be carried to a great distance from their original place. In the Glacial period or Great Ice Age, ice may have been an important help in distributing plants, but at present it is difficult to find a good example.

From all this it is clear that in order to carry plants to new countries and new homes, everything that moves on the earth's surface can be employed. Not only the wind, but ocean currents, river waters, icebergs, and floating ice are used. Migrating birds, mammals, and especially the most restless and unsettled animal of all, viz. man, are at work consciously and deliberately, or unconsciously and accidentally, carrying the seeds to form new forest, grasslands, or harvests in other countries.

The subject is in truth so vast that it is difficult to select the most interesting and important cases.

The way in which squirrels, rats, voles, and lemmings devour nuts and the like often leads to the distribution of the fruit. A squirrel may, like a human being, forget where its store was buried, or be driven from the place. Then some of those forgotten nuts will grow into trees.

Birds are known to travel enormous distances. It is said that one little Arctic bird travels from Heligoland to Morocco in a single flight. It would not, at first sight, seem likely that seeds and fruits could be carried by birds; yet Darwin saw that this might possibly be the case. The mud and slime in which so many birds find the small insects which they require is full of seeds. An Austrian botanist, Kerner von Marilaun, examined the mud scraped from the beaks, feathers, and legs of a number of wading and marsh-birds. He found in it the seeds of no less than thirty-one different water and marsh plants (Grasses, Sedges, Toad-rush, etc.). This showed, as is very often the case, that Darwin was the first to discover a very important point. It is also interesting to find that these ugly little freshwater mud and marsh plants are at home almost everywhere, from the Arctic circle to Tierra del Fuego and from Peru to Japan.

The most extraordinary cases known of sticking fruits and spines are the Martynias and Harpagophytons of South Africa. The fruit is covered by hooked claws, and becomes a regular pest wherever it occurs. Deer, antelopes, and other animals get their hoofs entangled in the fruit, and the wretched creatures have to limp about until the hard thorny fruit is trodden to pieces. Dr. Livingstone says that the fruit gets into the nostrils of grazing animals which cannot possibly remove it themselves, and so have to wait patiently till the herdsman comes to take it out. According to Lord Avebury, lions may sometimes be destroyed by these horrible fruits. When a lion is rolling on the sand, the claws (an inch long) stick in his skin, and when the lion tries to tear it away with his teeth his mouth gets full of the fruits and he cannot eat, and perishes miserably of starvation.[115]

Some of our common British fruits are most perfectly planned to stick or entangle themselves in the wool of sheep or in people's clothes. These, such as the Goosegrass (Robin-run-the-Hedge), Burdock, Forget-me-not, Sanicle, Avens, etc., have very often been described. It is only necessary to examine one's clothes after a walk through rough, broken ground to discover some of them, and the ingenuity and neatness of their tiny hooks, harpoons, or prongs can then be realized. We shall give one or two instances of some other spiny plants. There is, for instance, Xanthium, which is one of the Daisy flowers or Composites. Unlike most of this order, its little fruits possess no wind-hairs. The outside of the head of flowers is covered by strong curved little crooks. These get so entangled in wool or hair that they become a perfect pest to wool merchants. In 1814 Xanthium was unknown in the Crimea, but by 1856 it had covered the whole of the peninsula. In 1828 the Russian cavalry horses brought it on their manes and tails into Wallachia, from whence it travelled to Servia. Servian pigs carried it into Hungary. In 1830 it was taken in wool to Vienna. By 1871 it had reached Paris and Edinburgh. In 1860 Frauenfeld saw horses in Chile whose manes and tails were so felted together with thousands of these fruits that the animals could scarcely walk. In Australia, where it first appeared in 1850, it has caused a very serious loss to the wool merchants and squatters. The loss has been put at 50 per cent. by some authorities.[116]

We have already alluded to the transference of fruits and seeds by ocean currents. In the Challenger expedition, no less than ninety-seven kinds of marine floating fruits were observed.

Amongst these the most important is the Cocoanut. The nut sold in this country is not the whole fruit, but only the inside shell. In the natural state this is enclosed in a dense mass of fibres, which form the valuable "coir" used for brushmaking and a variety of purposes.

The entire outside of the fruit is covered by a smooth white skin. The whole fruit is about the size of a man's head, and is so light that it floats easily in the water. It has in fact been carried by the waves to uninhabited islands all over the South Seas. It is a very great blessing to Polynesia, for a tree yields thirty to fifty nuts, and four of these nuts will furnish enough food for one day. Coprah and the oil extracted by boiling the inside are also valuable. Spirit or toddy can be made from the young buds. The leaves are used for thatching and the trunk for timber.

There are other very curious palm fruits which are also carried by water. Sir Joseph Hooker mentions the large, round fruits of Nipa, as big as a cannon-ball, turned over by the paddles of the steamer in the muddy waters at the Ganges mouth (Himalayan Journal).

In this country a search in the rubbish left by a spate or freshet along a riverside is sure to furnish many floating fruits or seeds. Most of these are small and rather difficult to see. Perhaps the most interesting are those of the Sedges. The real fruit is only about one-sixteenth of an inch in size, but it is enclosed in a little sack or bag a quarter of an inch long and with a narrow opening, so that it floats quite easily. Many willow branches, pondweeds, hornweeds, and the like, are also found in the rubbish left by floods, and these can often take root.

It is, however, in the exquisite modifications of those fruits which are blown by the wind that we find the most beautiful contrivances of all. They are effective also. Seeds are often so small as to be like dust particles, and such may be carried in the air to almost incredible distances. That of Goodyera repens weighs only 1/200,000,000 of a pound, that of Monotropa, ·000,000,006 lb. It is no doubt by the wind that the spores of lichens are carried from one mountain to another. On a map of the world the distance from the Arctic to the Antarctic, between the North and South Poles, seems enormous. Moreover, the amount of water, desert, tropical forest, and cultivated land in this extent of country is very great. There are but few rocks on which lichens could manage to grow. And yet of the Antarctic Lichens in the South Polar regions, and which are also European species, more than 73 per cent. are found in the Arctic or North Polar regions.[117]

An Arctic lichen spore probably travelled from Scandinavia to the German and Swiss Alps, another journey took it to the Atlas Mountains, thence to Abyssinia, again to Mount Kenia, and from there, somehow, it wandered to the South Orkneys or King Edward VII Land.

While talking of lichens, one must not forget the Manna of the Bible (Lecanora esculenta) and two other species, which form warted, wrinkled masses on rocks. It breaks off and may be carried away by the wind, or in heavy rain it may be washed into depressions of the soil, where a man can pick up 8 to 12 lb. in a day.

It "is used as a substitute for corn in years of famine—being ground in the same way and baked into bread.... It is also remarkable that all the great so-called rains of manna, of which news has come from the East to Europe, especially those of the years 1824, 1828, 1841, 1846, 1863, and 1864, occurred at the beginning of the year, between January and March, i.e. at the time of the heaviest rains.... The inhabitants of the district actually thought that the manna had fallen from heaven, and quite overlooked the fact that this vegetable structure grew and developed (although only in isolated patches and principally as crusts on stones) in the immediate neighbourhood of the spots where they collected it."[118]

Amongst the wind-blown fruits and seeds there are cases in which entire plants are dragged out of the soil and hurried away by the wind, which rolls them over and over. They may be blown along for days together. The seeds drop out by the way. In this country one rarely sees anything of the sort, but in the Prairies of North America, when under cultivation, these tumble-weeds are a serious and expensive pest. Sometimes the farmers dig trenches to catch them, or they may put up fences against which the tumble-weeds become piled or heaped up until they blow over the top.

It is not very much use to give the names of these weeds, for they are mostly rare or not British species. Such tumble-weeds are generally nearly spherical in general form and have a short, rather weak, root which is easily torn out of the ground. In some grasses, such as "Old Witch," a well-known pest of the United States, the grass-stalk, with many flowers on it, is pulled out of its sheath and blown away.

But it is more usual for the fruits or seeds themselves to break off the parent plant, and to be carried away by the wind. To this end we find the most extraordinary changes. Although the flower may droop from its stalk, the latter becomes upright and grows quite a considerable length when the seed or fruit is dispatched on its wanderings. This will raise the fruit or seed as high as possible above the surrounding grasses.

Then in some cases the fruit opens to allow the seed to escape. Small holes appear in it, or the fruit splits. As the dry, elastic, withered stalk swings to and fro in the wind, the seeds are swung out of these openings, and starting with a certain momentum the wind will carry them often to a surprising distance from their parents. In wet or rainy weather these holes or slits generally close together, and no seeds are sent forth on their travels. The little holes in the top of a poppy-head by which the seeds are swung out have little flaps, which close over and shut them up in wet weather.

Some plants make a sort of catapult to sling or hurl their fruits. Kerner von Marilaun was the first to describe some of these curious arrangements. He had brought home some fruits of Dorycnium herbaceum and laid them on his writing-table. "Next day as I sat reading near the table, one of the seeds of the Dorycnium was suddenly jerked with great violence into my face." Some of the neatest catapult fruits are those of Teucrium flavum. (There is a British species, the Woodsage, but it has not got the same arrangement.) When the petals have fallen off, the four small fruits are left inside the cup-like sepals; the flower-stalk when dry is very elastic, and if an animal touches the sepals it swings violently and shoots out one of the fruits. But that is by no means the whole of the process: there are hairs arranged spirally in the throat of the sepals, and these give a spin or twirling motion like that of a rifle-bullet to the fruit. The fruit also flies out of the sepals in a line of flight which is inclined at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the horizon; at this angle, as is well known, the trajectory or distance travelled will be the greatest possible.

But by far the best way to understand these questions is to try with some common weeds in the country towards the end of summer or beginning of autumn. If either the Cow Parsnip or wild Angelica, or Myrrhis, be gathered and kept till it is quite dry, then if you take it by the stalk and swing it to the full extent of the arms the fruits fly off to fifteen (or more) feet away. Every part is elastic—not only the main stalk, but the thin separate stalks of the flowers and also the delicate piece by which each half-fruit is attached. The half-fruits themselves are also so made that they are of exactly the right shape to take a long flight.

Ever since the days of Icarus, one of the unsatisfied ambitions of mankind has been to fly like a bird, to "soar into the empyrean," and to be no longer chained to the earth's surface.

It is a very curious study, that of the many and diverse inventions, almost always useless and very often fatal, by which men have endeavoured to solve this problem. Every one of these can be paralleled amongst the many neat contrivances of wind-borne fruits and seeds. The principle of the "parachute," which is more or less like an umbrella, is found in both fruits and seeds. One of the most beautiful is the Dandelion fruit, where a series of the most exquisite branched hairs springs from the top of the slender shaft which carries the little hard fruit. Most of the Composite or Dandelion order have, however, more of the "shuttlecock" idea. There is a row or crown of stiff and spreading or feathery hairs.

The classical person above alluded to seems to have copied the bird's wing, sticking on feathers with wax, which of course melted in the sun with the usual result to the inventor of flying machines. Many seeds have regular wings which act like those of the bat or flying squirrel. One of the most exquisite of all is the seed of Bignonia. The Dahlia fruit has also a flying wing, and a great many others might be mentioned. Major Baden-Powell experimented with kites, which were supposed to raise a man high enough in the air to take observations of the enemy's movements. But a most exquisite "kite" is that of the Lime tree. The little fruit is hung from a broad, flying bract, and as it very slowly sinks to the ground it solemnly turns round and round. That is because the pressure of the air acts on the flat bract just as it does on an aeroplane, and forces it to revolve. So the fruit remains a long time in the air, and may be carried to nearly a hundred yards away from its parent tree.

The Traveller's Joy (Clematis) and the Cotton have their seeds covered all over by many entangled hairs, which act like a piece of fluff, so that the wind blows the seed away.

No one has discovered the original wild Cotton plant. The robes of the priests in Egyptian temples were made of it. It was introduced into Spain by the Arabs when they invaded that country. When the Spaniards attacked the half-civilized Indian people of Central and South America, they found cotton was regularly cultivated there. Its history in England is rather interesting. In the days of Queen Elizabeth the great English industry was the production of woollen cloth from Yorkshire sheep. A penalty of £20 was imposed, even as late as 1720, on any person who imported or even wore cotton cloths. Yet this was unable to stop the growth of the trade which, thanks to the Flemings and Huguenots who took refuge from religious persecution in this country, eventually became our gigantic textile industry employing millions of factory hands.

The advantage of these wings and hairs is at once seen if one compares the time that a fruit or seed takes to fall through a given height, first with its wings or hairs, and then after they have been cut off.

An Artichoke fruit, for instance, will take nearly eight seconds to reach the ground from a height of a few feet. But if you cut away its hairs, it will touch the ground in a little more than one second. A Sycamore fruit of which the wing has been removed falls to the ground in about a quarter of the time that it takes when it has not been injured, so that the wing helps it to fly to four times the distance that it could reach if it had none. The Ash fruit also remains twice as long in the air as it would do if it had no wing; and so on.

We shall finish this chapter by describing two very extraordinary cases.

The Sandbox tree is a native of tropical America. The fruit, as large as an orange, consists of a number of rounded pieces, each with a single seed inside. When ripe each piece splits off, making a noise like the report of a pistol. The plant is sometimes called the Monkey's Dinner Bell. These pieces may be thrown to a distance of fifty-seven feet from the parent plant.

Even more remarkable are the hygroscopic grasses. There are four of them, which are widely separated as regards distribution, for one (Stipa capillata) lives in Russia, another (Stipa spartea) in North America, a third (Aristida hygrometrica) is found in Queensland (Australia), and the fourth (Heteropogon contortus) belongs to New Caledonia.

Yet all these four grasses are said to kill sheep, and do so in a manner that is almost identical. The mechanism is as follows.

The fruit is like that of most grasses, enclosed in a folded leaf, the bract (or glume), which in these particular cases is produced into a very long fine tapering hair or awn. This awn is sensitive to changes in the moisture of the air. It is strongly hygrometric: in wet weather it straightens itself, and it coils into corkscrew spirals in dry weather. The widened part of the base, which contains the grain, tapers into a sharp, very hard point; upon this there are, on the outside, many stiff hairs, which point backwards away from the sharp tip.

Now, suppose this fruit to fall on the ground, the awn or tail is sure to be entangled in neighbouring grasses or herbs, but the hard point will rest upon the ground. Every coil and twist made by the entangled awn or tail will push the point a little deeper into the earth, and the backward-pointing stiff hairs will prevent its being pulled out of the soil.

Therefore all these modified contrivances ensure that the seed will bury itself.

But supposing that one of these fruits falls upon a sheep's back. Then an exactly similar process will go on. The seed will be forced through the skin into the body of the sheep. In fact, if it should fall above any soft or vulnerable part of the animal, the sheep will very likely be killed.

As a matter of fact, sheep are said to be killed by these grasses in all those four countries, distant though they are from one another.

We have endeavoured in this chapter to give some faint notion of the hundreds and thousands of ingenious contrivances utilized by plants in order to ensure the dispersal and future prosperity of their children.

Every species is always trying to colonize new ground, to seek fresh fields and new pastures. Plants are not content to keep to the old habitats, but every species tries to scatter its pioneers over all the neighbouring country, so that, as often happens, if it is exterminated or suppressed in one locality, new generations luxuriate elsewhere.

CHAPTER XXI
STORY OF THE CROPS

Bloated and unhealthy plants—Oats of the Borderers, Norsemen, and Danes—Wheat as a wild plant—Barley—Rye—Where was the very first harvest?—Vine in the Caucasus—Indians sowing corn—Early weeds—Where did weeds live before cultivation?—Armies of weeds—Their cunning and ingenuity—Gardeners' feats—The Ideal Bean—Diseased pineapples—Raising beetroot and carrot—Story of the travels of Sugar-cane—Indian Cupid—Beetroot and Napoleon.

IT is difficult to understand the amount of labour and toil that has been spent on farmlands and pastures, if one only considers England.

It is often impossible to discover one square mile still covered by the natural wild plants. It is all under corn or arable, or rich artificial meadowland.

But from a Scotch hillside, as one looks down at the fertile valley below, one can see first where the mosaic of hedges and dykes stops, then where, after a narrow stretch of rough grass pasture, the cultivation ends; finally, where, ridge after ridge, rolling, heathery moorland, without enclosures and without any sign of man's handiwork, rises up to the highest peaks.

This fills one with a respect and reverence towards our forbears, which is increased by a study of corn, turnips, and potatoes.

Every one of these plants is a thoroughly unnatural, artificially bloated, and overfed sort of creature. Its constitution, as is usual with those who habitually overeat themselves, is delicate and unsound.

No cultivated plant could exist for more than a season if man did not look after it and protect it from its rivals and weeds. Moreover, they are a curiously assorted lot.

Wheat probably came from Asia Minor, Swedes from Scandinavia, Mangelwurzel from the Mediterranean, and Potatoes from Chile. Turnips and Carrots are indeed native Britishers, though the original wild carrot or turnip would never be recognized as such by any ordinary person.

The history of every one of them is interesting. The Oat is the true Teutonic and Scandinavian grain, which has more "fibre" than any other cereal. There is an interesting passage in Froissart's Chronicles describing the commissariat of those hardy Scotch borderers who raided and ruined the northern English counties whenever they felt inclined to do so.[119] They lived for the most part on the cattle of their enemies, but each man carried a small sack of oatmeal and a griddle, or iron plate, on which to make oatcake. So that each man supported himself. His little rough pony also was quite able to look after itself.

That hardy plant, the Oat (Avena sativa) can be cultivated as far north as 69.50° N. lat. It is a native of Siberia and Western Europe.

It was oatmeal that supported the Norsemen who conquered Normandy and England, and who even dominated the Mediterranean. The Swedes of Gustavus Adolphus and the Danes of Canute also lived mainly upon oatmeal and porridge. It is true that in England oats are abandoned to the horses, but those horses are the best in the world. There can, of course, be no question as to whether the Scotch or English are the best!

The history of Wheat is a very complicated one; there are a great number of varieties and sub-species, all closely allied to our ordinary wheat, and difficult to distinguish from it. One variety occurs as a wild plant from Mesopotamia, near Ararat, over Servia, the Crimea, and as far as Thessaly, where entire hills are covered by it. This grain seems to have been cultivated at Troy, for Dr. Schliemann has found it at Hissarlik. It was, however, in cultivation long before the days of Achilles; it was grown by the Stone Age people, who lived in the lake dwellings of Switzerland. Another kind, "spelt" wheat, seems to have been the mainstay in ancient Egypt, in Greece, and all through the Roman Empire. It is now very rare, though it is still grown in Spain and in other countries where the soil is poor.

Grains of the true Wheat have been discovered in the Pyramids of Egypt, so that it also is very ancient. To-day Wheat extends to Norway (69° N. lat.), and may be grown up to 4400 feet on the Alps.[120] India, United States, Russia, the Argentine, Chile, Australia, and many other countries, produce great crops of this useful and nourishing food. Its fibre is 3 per cent., albuminous matter 11-1/2 per cent., and carbo-hydrates 66·5 per cent. Oat has 10 per cent. fibre, 11-1/2 per cent. albuminous, and 57 per cent. carbo-hydrates.

One guess as to the origin of Wheat is that the first-named (Mesopotamian sort) is the original wild plant. By cultivation in the rich alluvial valleys of Mesopotamia and Egypt, improved kinds were formed. These have eventually replaced both "spelt" wheat and the wild race, but could only do so when richly-cultivated fields were ready for them. On poor soil and with bad cultivation, "spelt" is said to be even now the most profitable crop.

Wild Barley grows in Arabia and from Asia Minor to Baluchistan. It is very important in the colder regions of Northern Europe, in Tibet, and in China, but with us "John Barleycorn" is chiefly used for brewing.

Rye also comes from Asia Minor. It was not apparently known in Europe until the Bronze period, but is now "the chief cereal of the German and Slavonic nations." The black rye-bread is familiar to all who have travelled on the Continent. The straw is good fodder, and is used for making hats and for paper.[121]

A very interesting point on which, however, it is quite impossible to come to a definite decision, may be noticed here. We will suppose what is quite as likely as any other theory, viz. that man as a gardening creature first settled somewhere in the Euphrates or Caucasian valleys.

What wild plants, then, would have been available for his experiments?

This particular region is an interesting and remarkable one. Most of our common British plants occur along the shore of the Black Sea to the Caucasus (apple, pear, nut, turnip, cabbage, carrot, and others, are all probably to be found there). On the Babylonian side of the mountains, there is a warm sub-tropical climate in which almost every useful plant can be grown. The desert also contains a few other valuable plants.

Near Ararat, Noah might have found rye, wheat, and barley growing wild. The Wild Vine also grows on the south of the Caucasus. "It grows there with the luxuriant wildness of a tropical creeper, clinging to tall trees and producing abundant fruit without pruning or cultivation."[122] In that favoured district, the olive and the fig, the melon and cucumber, onions, garlic, and shallots, and other common garden and medicinal plants, can be found. Not far away is the native country of the camel, the ass, the horse, and most other domestic animals.