e significance of animal and vegetable
coloration. Why is corn so bright colored, and wheat and barley so
dull, and rice so white? No doubt there is a reason in each case, but
I doubt if that reason has any relation to the surrounding animal
life.

The new Botany teaches that the flowers have color and perfume to
attract the insects to aid in their fertilization--a need so paramount
with all plants, because plants that are fertilized by aid of the wind
have very inconspicuous flowers. Is it equally true that the high
color of most fruits is to attract some hungry creature to come and
eat them and thus scatter the seeds? From the dwarf cornel, or
bunch-berry, in the woods, to the red thorn in the fields, every
fruit-bearing plant and shrub and tree seems to advertise itself to
the passer-by in its bright hues. Apparently there is no other use to
the plant of the fleshy pericarp than to serve as a bait or wage for
some animal to come and sow its seed. Why, then, should it not take on
these alluring colors to help along this end? And yet there comes the
thought, may not this scarlet and gold of the berries and tree fruits
be the inevitable result of the chemistry of ripening, as it is with
the autumn foliage? What benefit to the tree, directly or indirectly,
is all this wealth of color of the autumn? Many of the toadstools are
highly colored also; how do they profit by it? Many of the shells upon
the beach are very showy; to what end? The cherry-birds find the pale
ox-hearts as readily as they do the brilliant Murillos, and the dull
blue cedar berries and the duller drupes of the lotus are not
concealed from them nor from the robins. But it is true that the
greenish white grapes in the vineyard do not suffer from the attacks
of the birds as do the blue and red ones. The reason probably is that
the birds regard them as unripe. The white grape is quite recent, and
the birds have not yet "caught on."

Poisonous fruits are also highly colored; to what end? In Bermuda I
saw on low bushes great masses of what they called "pigeon-berries" of
a brilliant yellow color and very tempting, yet I was assured they
were poisonous. It would be interesting to know if anything eats the
red berries of our wild turnip or arum. I doubt if any bird or beast
could stand them. Wherefore, then, are they so brightly colored? I am
also equally curious to know if anything eats the fruit of the red and
white baneberry and the blue cohosh.

The see