Page:The Works of Aristotle - Vol. 6 - Opuscula (1913).djvu/97

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only, the squill for example; for it grows in a single shoot and spreads by expansion underground, and will increase as it grows more and more and approaches the sunlight, because the sun draws out its scales.

Of the juices which are found in fruits, some are drinkable, as, for instance, the juice of grapes, pomegranates, mulberries, and myrtles. Some juices arc oily, as in the olive and pine-nut; others are sweet like honey, as in the date and fig; others are hot and pungent, as in marjoram and mustard; others bitter, as in wormwood and centaury. Some fruits are made up of a fleshy and a bony substance and a seed, plums for example; others, cucumbers for instance, are made up of a fleshy substance and seeds, others of moisture and seeds like the pomegranate. Some have rind outside and seed inside, others flesh outside and seed inside; in others one comes immediately upon the seed with the envelope which encloses it, as in dates and almonds; in others this is not so. Fruits are edible or inedible accidentally, and some people can eat certain fruits while others cannot, and certain animals can eat certain fruits while others cannot. Some fruits, again, are in pods, like seeds; others in sheaths, like weapons, wheat for example; others are enclosed in a fleshy substance, dates for instance; others in husks, acorns for example, and some in several husks, a cuticle and a shell, walnuts for example. Some fruits mature quickly, like mulberries and cherries, others slowly, as do all or most wild fruits. Some plants produce their leaves and fruits quickly, others slowly; some wait for the winter before coming to maturity. The colours of fruits and flowers vary very much. One plant is green throughout, another has a tendency to blackness, another to whiteness, another to redness. Also the conformation of the fruit, if it be wild, varies considerably; for all fruits are not angular, nor do they take the form of straight lines.

aromatic trees it is sometimes the root which is aromatic, sometimes the bark, sometimes the flower, and