very fine hair-like rootlets, but they are in nowise like the graceful parent fern from which they sprang.

12. Here, then, may be noted the difference between a seed and a spore. A seed gives rise directly to a plant exactly like the parent plant ;

A FERN ROOT, AND FROND SHOWING SPORES.

a spore produces something which is totally unlike the parent.

scale may

afterwards grow into

13. The green a fern if all goes well with it, but it will take a year or two to arrive at its full size.

14. Much of a fern's early growth takes place underground. The fronds of the common bracken, for instance, are snugly packed in a little roll. Beginning at the base of the leaf, these fronds slip one by one from their cosy beds. Baby fronds are they, as the swaddling meshes of fern-wool plainly declare.

15. Their roots will for a long time be creeping under stones and wood, ever feeling their way in the direction of moisture. Not perhaps till the warm showers of the third summer will those graceful fronds unroll themselves, to form their circlet of tall green plumes.

16. What is more beautiful in form than the fronds of a fern? Could any flower add unto its beauty one jot? It is surely beautiful enough in itself!

LESSON 45.

THE KINDLY FRUITS OF THE EARTH.

ma-tu'-ri-ty cul-ti-va'-tion grad'-u-al-ly or-ig'-in-al

1. On the place where the flower has been, there the fruit of the plant will afterwards make As the blossom fades away, the

its appearance.

fruit begins to show itself. The fruit is the pistil grown to maturity; sometimes the calyx or flowercup remains attached, as it does to the apple and the gooseberry.

2. The fruit is nothing more than a case to contain the seeds. These seed-cases ripen into a variety of forms. Some become what is commonly known as fruits, some become berries, some pods, and some grains.

3. In the apple, the seeds are inclosed in a mass of hard pulp which is such good eating; the pips or seeds are covered by the tough scales of the core or center, as a further protection. To this class of fruit, which includes the apple, the and the hip of the rose, is given the name of

pear

pome.

4. A ripe apple is juicy. A ripe plum is even more so; the pulp is quite soft, but the one seed in its center is protected by being incased in a hard stone which it is difficult to crack. This kind of fruit is called a drupe. A blackberry is said to be made up of drupels or little drupes.

5. In a third class of fruits, which are also juicy, and to which belong the gooseberry, the orange, and the grape, the seeds are merely embedded within the pulp. The name of berry is given to this class.

6. Some fruits when ripe are not juicy at all, but are quite dry. Peas and beans, for instance,

have their seeds fastened to little stalks, and inclosed within a case which is called a pod.

7. Grains, also, as wheat and barley, oats and rice, are the fruit of the plant, ripened exceedingly dry.

8. There are many exceptions to these common forms of fruit. In the strawberry, which is really not a berry at all, nor yet a drupe, nor a pome, the seeds actually grow outside on the surface, and the soft juicy pulp forms a sort of cushion for them to lie upon.

9. Horticulture, as we call the cultivating of gardens, has altered the nature of many fruits. When a particular kind of fruit, as the apple or pear, has been improved by high cultivation, slips are cut from the plant, and grafted on to strong, well-grown stocks of inferior fruit trees; and in this way the finest kinds are produced and kept up.

10. All the fine kinds of apples have arisen from one parent kind; namely, the crab-apple. They can only be produced by careful cultivation in good soil and by grafting; and if the seeds of the finest variety were sown in ordinarily poor soil, the quality of the apple would gradually grow worse till the fruit reverted again to the original crab.

11. The work of the fruit is to disperse the seeds within it. The devices by which it does

this are various. Sometimes the seeds are scattered by bursting pods, sometimes they have attached to them feathery or hairy wings by which they float away upon the wind; and sometimes the fruit merely falls and rolls along the ground, carrying the seeds in its interior; as the gooseberry, the apple, the cherry and the peach do.

12. We began this set of lessons on plant life with a parent seed; we have seen how that seed may sprout, grow up, blossom forth, and in its turn bear other seeds to carry on the species in a never ending circle of life.

13. But plants bear very many more seeds than are necessary for sowing in the ground to carry on their species. These surplus seeds are not always wasted. Seeds such as corn, beans and barley, as well as many fruits, such as apples and pears, afford a pleasant food for man. Not only are they eaten when fresh, but often they are prepared for future eating. Plums are dried into prunes, and grapes into currants or raisins. Some are candied with sugar, and some are made into jam and preserves.

14. Flowerless plants, which have only simple spores in place of seeds, bear no fruits. Thus ferns bear no flowers; they produce leafy fronds, which bear cases or bags in which the spores are