Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/369

Rh authority to the same conclusion. For my part I can not accept this view. There are, it seems to me, very strong reasons against it, into which I can not, of course, now enter; and, though I should rely mainly on other considerations, the colors of fruits are not, I think, without significance. If monkeys and apes could distinguish them, surely we may infer that even the most savage of men could do so too. Zeuxis would never have deceived the birds if he had not had a fair perception of color.



In these instances of colored fruits, the fleshy edible part more or less surrounds the true seeds; in others the actual seeds themselves become edible. In the former the edible part serves as a temptation to animals; in the latter it is stored up for the use of the plant itself. When, therefore, the seeds themselves are edible they are generally protected by more or less hard or bitter envelopes, for instance the