Page:The Popular Educator Volume 1.djvu/37

 observations made on young dragon-trees, the growth of which is remarkably slow. What grand, what stupendous thoughts does a contemplation of this fact awaken! When did this monster first begin to grow? How many thousand years have rolled over its weather-beaten head? We are afraid to speculate on these points, but will content ourselves by saying that, according to the most reasonable evidence which can be adduced, this great dragon-tree began to grow long, very long, before the creation of man. Yet this monster is a lily!

The student will admit that, supposing our previous remarks to be correct, our ordinary notions concerning the similarities or dissimilarities of vegetables—in other words, their alliances, and as a consequence their classification—are very incorrect. Not less incorrect are some of our common ideas regarding the similarities and dissimilarities, or the alliances, of the parts of which vegetables are composed. For example, do we not commonly speak of onions and potatoes as roots? Yet they are not roots, nor are they similar, far less identical, in character. The onion is a bulb, or underground bud, and the potato is a tuber or knotty excrescence developed underground, from which the roots and stems of the potato plant respectively spring. Why are they not roots? the learner may ask. The reason why will appear by-and-by: to explain these reasons is an object, and one of the main objects, of botany. We merely cite the example now for the purpose of making known in a striking manner the incorrectness of many notions we are in the habit of entertaining.

Again, do we not in ordinary language term the strawberry and the fig fruits? Yet neither is a fruit.

"Not a fruit!" the learner exclaims, "do we not eat them?" Well, surely, our reader would not limit the term fruit to something which grows on a vegetable, and which is good to eat. We think he will admit that the bunches of apples, as they are called, which grow on potato stems, are the fruits of the potato plant; yet potato apples are not good to eat. He will admit that the bunches which grow on ash-trees are the fruits of those trees, yet they are not good to eat. Finally, not to multiply examples unnecessarily, he will admit that acorns are the fruits of the oak-tree; and although our ancestors, the ancient Britons, are known to have eaten them, yet all we can say upon that point is, that one pities the bad taste or the hard fortune, as the case may be, of our forefathers.

If strawberries, then, and figs are not fruits, what are they? Why, the fig is to all intents and purposes a compound flower, as much as the dandelion is a compound flower; and a strawberry is something like a fig turned inside out; but the learner shall judge for himself.

The strawberry plant bears, as we all know, a very evident, a very pretty flower, the petals or flower-leaves of which dropping off, we ultimately get something which is good to eat, and which we term the strawberry fruit.

Why, then, is it not a fruit? We will see. If it be a fruit, it should contain seeds; but on cutting it open we cannot find any. Here, then, the learner would be puzzled if botany did not come to his aid. General principles have to be appealed to, and the appeal will not be made in vain.

Whilst conjecturing within ourselves the botanical nature of the strawberry, and trying to find out the freak which Nature has been playing in order to lead us astray, we all at once bethink ourselves of the little hard protuberances on the outside of the strawberry. What are they?—of what do they consist?—what is their function?

A learner, if he had not been rendered cautious by previous experience, might all at once arrive at the conclusion that the strawberry is a fruit turned inside out, having consequently its seeds externally; and amazingly like seeds do these little protuberances appear. They are not seeds, nevertheless: they are fruits, the real strawberry fruits; but so little adapted for eating are they that the lover of strawberries wishes them very far away. Then what is the edible portion of the strawberry? Botany answers this question satisfactorily, and makes all clear. It is the juicy torus of the plant. The reader gains little knowledge from this remark beyond the knowledge of an, at present, unmeaning name; and as we do not intend that any names in this series of papers on the Science of Botany shall be unmeaning, we will at once proceed to explain what a torus is.

Torus, then, is the Latin word for bed, and signifies that portion of certain flowers upon which the flower itself reposes or grows. Take, for example, the marigold, and strip off all its floral parts; there will then remain underneath a flat, fleshy expansion, called the torus. In the case of the marigold the torus is flat; but the reader may easily conceive that it might have been round or approaching to rotundity. In the marigold it is leathery and nauseous, but the reader will as easily conceive that it might have been fleshy and delicious, as indeed we find it to be in the strawberry. Analysed thus, we find a similarity between the strawberry and the marigold that the non-botanical reader would have little suspected. Nor is the similarity forced; it is natural, and loses nothing by the fullest investigation which the learner can devote to it. Thus, we dare say, the reader has watched the progress of a marigold to maturity; has noticed the flowers blown away, one by one, and nothing but the stem, the torus, and the little seed-like things embedded upon the torus remain. These little things, like the hard excrescences on the strawberry, look so much like seeds, that they might be taken for such. However, we are never to assume because a thing is small that it is imperfect. If these so-called seeds be dissected and examined, they will be found to be real fruits, as much as the apple or the pear, and so contain seeds internally.

And now for our other example, the fig. What is the fig? Not a fruit certainly, although the freak of Nature here, if we may without disrespect use such a term, is different from those which have come under our notice hitherto. Let us cut open a fig; what then do we see? Why, little things very similar in appearance to flowers, at the base of each of which there is a hard nut-like thing which cracks between the teeth. Flowers indeed they are, and the nut-like things are fruits, the edible portion of the fig being a torus; so that if we assume the strawberry to have had a flat torus instead of a knob-like one, and that the flat torus had been turned outside in, in such a manner as to form a bottle with a very narrow mouth, we should have had a result very much resembling a fig in structure and general appearance.

Even the delicious pine-apple can hardly be termed a fruit. Each pine-apple certainly contains many fruits, one corresponding with each lozenge-like marking; but the main bulk of the pine-apple, that which we find so delicious to eat, is only an assemblage of juicy fructs, as botanists call them, the exact counterpart of those little scales which, when tightly compressed together, form the cup of the acorn.

We are sure, then, that sufficient has been stated to make apparent to the reader the necessity of abandoning many common notions he may have previously entertained in relation to the similarities and dissimilarities of vegetables, and the parts of which they are made up.

LESSONS IN GERMAN.—I.

object of the author of these Lessons in German is to unite theory and practice; to introduce, one by one, the easier forms and usages of the language; and to direct the student's attention to the more obvious differences between the German and English languages. The learner will be supplied, throughout the various exercises, with the materials necessary for their due performance. Every section is headed with the statement and illustration of all new principles involved, with an explanation of words and phrases, and a vocabulary alphabetically arranged. To render these lessons complete, there will be given at the end a series of reading lessons, each accompanied by a full vocabulary. The whole is specially intended for those