Chapter 14. The Fruit Gift

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_ CHAPTER XIV. THE FRUIT GIFT

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1. In the course of the preceding chapter, I hope that the reader has obtained, or may by a little patience both obtain and secure, the idea of a great natural Ordinance, which, in the protection given to the part of plants necessary to prolong their race, provides, for happier living creatures, food delightful to their taste, and forms either amusing or beautiful to their eyes. Whether in receptacle, calyx, or true husk,--in the cup of the acorn, the fringe of the filbert, the down of the apricot, or bloom of the plum, the powers of Nature consult quite other ends than the mere continuance of oaks and plum trees on the earth; and must be regarded always with gratitude more deep than wonder, when they are indeed seen with human eyes and human intellect.

2. But in one family of plants, the _contents_ also of the seed, not the envelope of it merely, are prepared for the support of the higher animal life; and their grain, filled with the substance which, for universally understood name, may best keep the Latin one of Farina,--becoming in French, 'Farine,' and in English, 'Flour,'--both in the perfectly nourishing elements of it, and its {228} easy and abundant multiplicability, becomes the primal treasure of human economy.

3. It has been the practice of botanists of all nations to consider the seeds of the grasses together with those of roses and pease, as if all could be described on the same principles, and with the same nomenclature of parts. But the grain of corn is a quite distinct thing from the seed of pease. In _it_, the husk and the seed envelope have become inextricably one. All the exocarps, endocarps, epicarps, mesocarps, shells, husks, sacks, and skins, are woven at once together into the brown bran; and inside of that, a new substance is collected for us, which is not what we boil in pease, or poach in eggs, or munch in nuts, or grind in coffee;--but a thing which, mixed with water and then baked, has given to all the nations of the world their prime word for food, in thought and prayer,--Bread; their prime conception of the man's and woman's labor in preparing it--("whoso putteth hand to the _plough_"--two women shall be grinding at the _mill_)--their prime notion of the means of cooking by fire--("which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the _oven_"), and their prime notion of culinary office--the "chief _baker_," cook, or pastrycook,--(compare Bedreddin Hassan in the Arabian Nights): and, finally, to modern civilization, the Saxon word 'lady,' with whatever it imports.

4. It has also been the practice of botanists to confuse all the ripened products of plants under the general term {229} 'fruit.' But the essential and separate fruit-gift is of two substances, quite distinct from flour, namely, oil and wine, under the last term including for the moment all kinds of juice which will produce alcohol by fermentation. Of these, oil may be produced either in the kernels of nuts, as in almonds, or in the substance of berries, as in the olive, date, and coffee-berry. But the sweet juice which will become medicinal in wine, can only be developed in the husk, or in the receptacle.

5. The office of the Chief Butler, as opposed to that of the Chief Baker, and the office of the Good Samaritan, pouring in oil and wine, refer both to the total fruit-gift in both kinds: but in the study of plants, we must primarily separate our notion of their gifts to men into the three elements, flour, oil, and wine; and have instantly and always intelligible names for them in Latin, French, and English.

And I think it best not to confuse our ideas of pure vegetable substance with the possible process of fermentation:--so that rather than 'wine,' for a constant specific term, I will take 'Nectar,'--this term more rightly including the juices of the peach, nectarine, and plum, as well as those of the grape, currant, and apple.

Our three separate substances will then be easily named in all three languages:

  Farina.            Oleum.             Nectar.
  Farine.            Huile.             Nectare.
  Flour.             Oil.               Nectar.

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There is this farther advantage in keeping the third common term, that it leaves us the words Succus, Jus, Juice, for other liquid products of plants, watery, milky, sugary, or resinous,--often indeed important to man, but often also without either agreeable flavor or nutritious power; and it is therefore to be observed with care that we may use the word 'juice,' of a liquid produced by any part of a plant, but 'nectar,' only of the juices produced in its fruit.

6. But the good and pleasure of fruit is not in the juice only;--in some kinds, and those not the least valuable, (as the date,) it is not in the juice at all. We still stand absolutely in want of a word to express the more or less firm _substance_ of fruit, as distinguished from all other products of a plant. And with the usual ill-luck,--(I advisedly think of it as demoniacal misfortune)--of botanical science, no other name has been yet used for such substance than the entirely false and ugly one of 'Flesh,'--Fr., 'Chair,' with its still more painful derivation 'Charnu,' and in England the monstrous scientific term, 'Sarco-carp.'

But, under the housewifery of Proserpina, since we are to call the juice of fruit, Nectar, its substance will be as naturally and easily called Ambrosia; and I have no doubt that this, with the other names defined in this chapter, will not only be found practically more convenient than the phrases in common use, but will more securely fix in the student's mind a true conception of {231} the essential differences in substance, which, ultimately, depend wholly on their pleasantness to human perception, and offices for human good; and not at all on any otherwise explicable structure or faculty. It is of no use to determine, by microscope or retort, that cinnamon is made of cells with so many walls, or grape-juice of molecules with so many sides;--we are just as far as ever from understanding why these particular interstices should be aromatic, and these special parallelopipeds exhilarating, as we were in the savagely unscientific days when we could only see with our eyes, and smell with our noses. But to call each of these separate substances by a name rightly belonging to it through all the past variations of the language of educated man, will probably enable us often to discern powers in the thing itself, of affecting the human body and mind, which are indeed qualities infinitely more its _own_, than any which can possibly be extracted by the point of a knife, or brayed out with a mortar and pestle.

7. Thus, to take merely instance in the three main elements of which we have just determined the names,--flour, oil, and ambrosia;--the differences in the kinds of pleasure which the tongue received from the powderiness of oat-cake, or a well-boiled potato--(in the days when oat-cake and potatoes were!)--from the glossily-softened crispness of a well-made salad, and from the cool and fragrant amber of an apricot, are indeed distinctions between the essential virtues of things which {232} were made to be _tasted_, much more than to be eaten; and in their various methods of ministry to, and temptation of, human appetites, have their part in the history, not of elements merely, but of souls; and of the soul-virtues, which from the beginning of the world have bade the barrel of meal not waste, nor the cruse of oil fail; and have planted, by waters of comfort, the fruits which are for the healing of nations.

8. And, again, therefore, I must repeat, with insistance, the claim I have made for the limitation of language to the use made of it by educated men. The word 'carp' could never have multiplied itself into the absurdities of endo-carps and epi-carps, but in the mouths of men who scarcely ever read it in its original letters, and therefore never recognized it as meaning precisely the same thing as 'fructus,' which word, being a little more familiar with, they would have scarcely abused to the same extent; they would not have called a walnut shell an intra-fruct--or a grape skin an extra-fruct; but again, because, though they are accustomed to the English 'fructify,' 'frugivorous'--and 'usufruct,' they are unaccustomed to the Latin 'fruor,' and unconscious therefore that the derivative 'fructus' must always, in right use, mean an _enjoyed_ thing, they generalize every mature vegetable product under the term; and we find Dr. Gray coolly telling us that there is no fruit so "likely to be mistaken for a seed," as a grain of corn! a grain, whether of corn, or any other {233} grass, being precisely the vegetable structure to which frutescent change is forever forbidden! and to which the word _seed_ is primarily and perfectly applicable!--the thing to be _sown_, not grafted.

9. But to mark this total incapability of frutescent change, and connect the form of the seed more definitely with its dusty treasure, it is better to reserve, when we are speaking with precision, the term 'grain' for the seeds of the grasses: the difficulty is greater in French than in English: because they have no monosyllabic word for the constantly granular 'seed'; but for us the terms are all simple, and already in right use, only not quite clearly enough understood; and there remains only one real difficulty now in our system of nomenclature, that having taken the word 'husk' for the seed-vessel, we are left without a general word for the true fringe of a filbert, or the chaff of a grass. I don't know whether the French 'frange' could be used by them in this sense, if we took it in English botany. But for the present, we can manage well enough without it, one general term, 'chaff,' serving for all the grasses, 'cup' for acorns, and 'fringe' for nuts.

10. But I call this a _real_ difficulty, because I suppose, among the myriads of plants of which I know nothing, there may be forms of the envelope of fruits or seeds which may, for comfort of speech, require some common generic name. One _un_real difficulty, or shadow of difficulty, remains in our having no entirely comprehensive {234} name for seed and seed-vessel together than that the botanists now use, 'fruit.' But practically, even now, people feel that they can't gather figs of thistles, and never speak of the fructification of a thistle, or of the fruit of a dandelion. And, re-assembling now, in one view, the words we have determined on, they will be found enough for all practical service, and in such service always accurate, and, usually, suggestive. I repeat them in brief order, with such farther explanation as they need.

11. All ripe products of the life of flowers consist essentially of the Seed and Husk,--these being, in certain cases, sustained, surrounded, or provided with means of motion, by other parts of the plant; or by developments of their own form which require in each case distinct names. Thus the white cushion of the dandelion to which its brown seeds are attached, and the personal parachutes which belong to each, must be separately described for that species of plants; it is the little brown thing they sustain and carry away on the wind, which must be examined as the essential product of the floret;--the 'seed and husk.'

12. Every seed has a husk, holding either that seed alone, or other seeds with it.

Every perfect seed consists of an embryo, and the substance which first nourishes that embryo; the whole enclosed in a sack or other sufficient envelope. Three essential parts altogether. {235}

Every perfect husk, vulgarly pericarp, or 'round-fruit,'--(as periwig, 'round-wig,')--consists of a shell, (vulgarly endocarp,) rind, (vulgarly mesocarp,) and skin, (vulgarly epicarp); three essential parts altogether. But one or more of these parts may be effaced, or confused with another; and in the seeds of grasses they all concentrate themselves into bran.

13. When a husk consists of two or more parts, each of which has a separate shaft and volute, uniting in the pillar and volute of the flower, each separate piece of the husk is called a 'carpel.' The name was first given by De Candolle, and must be retained. But it continually happens that a simple husk divides into two parts corresponding to the two leaves of the embryo, as in the peach, or symmetrically holding alternate seeds, as in the pea. The beautiful drawing of the pea-shell with its seeds, in Rousseau's botany, is the only one I have seen which rightly shows and expresses this arrangement.

14. A Fruit is either the husk, receptacle, petal, or other part of a flower _external to the seed_, in which chemical changes have taken place, fitting it for the most part to become pleasant and healthful food for man, or other living animals; but in some cases making it bitter or poisonous to them, and the enjoyment of it depraved or deadly. But, as far as we know, it is without any definite office to the seed it contains; and the change takes {236} place entirely to fit the plant to the service of animals.[66]

In its perfection, the Fruit Gift is limited to a temperate zone, of which the polar limit is marked by the strawberry, and the equatorial by the orange. The more arctic regions produce even the smallest kinds of fruit with difficulty; and the more equatorial, in coarse, oleaginous, or over-luscious masses.

15. All the most perfect fruits are developed _from exquisite forms either of foliage or flower_. The vine leaf, in its generally decorative power, is the most important, both in life and in art, of all that shade the habitations of men. The olive leaf is, without any rival, the most beautiful of the leaves of timber trees; and its blossom, though minute, of extreme beauty. The apple is essentially the fruit of the rose, and the peach of her only rival in her own colour. The cherry and orange blossom are the two types of floral snow.

16. And, lastly, let my readers be assured, the economy of blossom and fruit, with the distribution of water, {237} will be found hereafter the most accurate test of wise national government.

For example of the action of a national government, rightly so called, in these matters, I refer the student to the Mariegolas of Venice, translated in Fors Clavigera; and I close this chapter, and this first volume of Proserpina, not without pride, in the words I wrote on this same matter eighteen years ago. "So far as the labourer's immediate profit is concerned, it matters not an iron filing whether I employ him in growing a peach, or in forging a bombshell. But the difference to him is final, whether, when his child is ill, I walk into his cottage, and give it the peach,--or drop the shell down his chimney, and blow his roof off." _

Read next: Index 1. Descriptive Nomenclature

Read previous: Chapter 13. The Seed And Husk

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