Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/331

Rh plant is specially exposed. The red berries of our English bryony are eaten by birds, who aid, of course, in disseminating the seeds; but the big and swollen root, known to French herbalists as the navet du diable, in which the plant stores all its accumulated material for next year's growth, is strenuously protected from the attacks of rabbits, pigs, and other grubbing animals by an intensely bitter and poisonous principle which chemists call bryonine. Colocynth, again—the amorous colocynth—is a plant closely allied to the melon and cucumber; but in this case the intensely bitter and poisonous essence (the "uncompounded pills" of the poet) is diffused in the fruit itself, which, like that of the squirting cucumber, desires to repel rather than to entice the attentions of animals. In the edible cucumber, once more, which prefers to be eaten, the bitter principle is collected at the stalk-end of the unripe fruit, as well as generally in the outer rind, thus serving to prevent attacks in the early stages of growth, or unauthorized grubbing into the soft pulp by useless insects. I suppose I need hardly remind even the non-agricultural mind in these days of villa-gardening that the ripe cucumber is bright yellow, smooth, and faintly sweetish; on our tables it always appears in its unripe stage, when it is green, hard, and covered externally with rough excrescences, intended to repel the attacks of enemies. In the early gherkin state it is even prickly.

The fruit of the actual bottle-gourd itself is intermediate in size between the great tropical calabash and the little bryony berries of our northern hedge-rows. Its one noteworthy peculiarity lies in its hard, coriaceous, and shining rind, far more woody in character than even that of its near allies the pumpkins and the calabashes. This peculiarity, again, is not without a meaning in the history of the race: it points back with no uncertain finger (why should gourds be denied fingers?) to the subtropical origin of the gourd species. For the bottle-gourd itself, to employ the language most frequently applied to our Aryan brother, is a native of India, though it has long been cultivated for the sake of its fruits round the whole Mediterranean. Now, it is a noticeable fact in the philosophy of fruits that most fruits of northern climates, like the strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, and currant, can be picked off the bush, tree, or vine, and popped at once into the mouth without any preparation; but almost all tropical fruits, like the orange, pineapple, mango, and banana, require a plate with a knife and fork to eat them with; in other words, they can only be eaten after we have stripped off a hard or nauseous rind.

Why this difference? Well, it has reference clearly to the kind of animals by which the seeds of each are oftenest disseminated in the native condition. Northern fruits, in short, are mainly eaten by small birds, which swallow them whole, but