the entire vessel, seed and all; digests the pulpy covering; and rejects the hard seed in circumstances admirably adapted for its growth. Plants of this sort, therefore, lay themselves out to allure the allure the dispersing birds, and accordingly fill their fruits with sweet juices and bright colouring, just as they render their flowers attractive with honey and surround them with brilliant petals to allure the fertilising insects. Moreover, they need not now produce much more than one seed in each fruit, because the seeds have so much a better chance of growing up than they used to have. Hence most berries contain very few seeds, often only one, and in many cases the numerous cells of the dry ancestral capsule get aborted in an early stage, because they are no longer needed by the juicy modern fruit. Almost all the honeysuckle tribe (to which, though you would hardly think it, the guelder rose belongs) have succulent fruits; and their seeds are solitary, or at least very few in each cell. So that the three cells of these very young flowers keep up the memory of a time when the guelder rose had not as yet acquired its berry, but was obliged to produce large numbers of small dry seeds in a three-celled capsule. There are two more small matters connected with this bush which one can hardly afford to overlook. The first is that while the flowers are white, the berries are blackish red, and those of the nearly allied wayfaring-tree are dark purple. Now, white is a common colour for flowers, but very rare in fruits; while black or dark blue and purple are common colours for fruits, but very rare in flowers. The plant is obliged to use one set of hues to attract the proper insects, and another set to attract the proper birds; for we now know that each species of insect and of bird has a very decided taste of its own in the matter of chromatics. The second point is this the leaves of the guelder rose have a number of small swollen glands all along the stalk, and a fringe of ragged-looking leaf-like : appendages where they join the branch. These are very marked and obviously useful structures what is their meaning? That I do not know. I merely mention them because their object seems at present insoluble. One might say the same thing about a hundred other points in every plant or animal one picks up in a country stroll. The descriptions of naturalists are apt to make one suppose that we know all about them. In reality, only a few small parts of their mechanism are yet even partially understood. The very idea of explaining the origin of organic structure genetically is still a novel one. We have only just begun to dig at the vast mine; and all we can do as yet is to unearth a solitary little nugget or two and parade them before the world. The labour of the old-fashioned naturalists has collected an enormous mass of facts as to form and structure; but as to use and function we have still almost all the work to do. XI. THE HERON'S HAUNT. Most of the fields on the country side are now laid up for hay, or down in tall haulming corn; and so I am driven from my accustomed botanising grounds on the open and compelled to take refuge in the wild bosky moorland back of Hole Common. Here, on the edge of the copse, the river widens to a considerable pool, and coming upon it softly through the wood from behind-the boggy, mosscovered ground masking and muffling my footfall-I have surprised a great, graceful ash-and-white heron, standing all unconscious on the shallow bottom, in the very act of angling for minnows. The heron is a some what rare bird among the more cultivated parts of England; but just hereabouts we get a sight of one not infrequently, for they still breed in a few tall ash trees at Chilcombe Park, where the lords of the manor in mediæval times long preserved a regular heronry to provide sport for their hawking. There is no English bird, not even the swan, so perfectly and absolutely graceful as the heron. I am leaning now breathless and noiseless against the gate, taking a good look at him, as he stands half-knee deep on the oozy bottom, with his long neck arched over the water, and his keen, purple eye fixed eagerly upon the fish below. Though I am still twenty yards from where he poises lightly on his stilted legs, I can see distinctly his long pendent snow-white breast feathers, his crest of waving black plumes, falling loosely backward over the ash-grey neck, and even the bright red skin of his bare legs just below the feathered thighs. I dare hardly move nearer to get a closer view of his beautiful |