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Within the tropics, the bertholletia forms in less than fifty or sixty days a pericarp, the ligneous part of which is half an inch thick, and which it is difficult to saw with the sharpest instruments. A great naturalist has observed, that the wood of fruits attains in general a hardness which is scarcely to be found in the wood of the trunks of trees.
The wheat should be damped with water containing 10 parts in 100 of alcoholized caustic soda; at the expiration of one hour the envelopes of the pericarp, and of the testa Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, should be separated by friction in a coarse cloth, having been reduced by the action of the alkali to a pulpy state; each berry should then be opened separately to remove the portion of the envelope held in the fold of the crease, and then all the berries divided in two are put into three parts of water charged with one-hundredth of caustic potash.
Phillips found a flesh-coloured drupaceous oblong fruit, about half an inch long, with a very glutinous pericarp, containing a slightly compressed rough stone: in taste it resembled the fruit of Loranthus, and the birds, particularly the coekatoos, appeared very fond of it. We all ate a great quantity of them, without the slightest injury. It grew on a small tree, and had a persistent calyx.
This name it derives from the fact of its trunk which is very large and high being thickly set all over with sharp, branching thorns, that are fancied to resemble the whiskers of the jaguar, or South American "tiger." This bush is ten or twelve feet in height, and its seeds grow in a burr-like pericarp. These seeds are covered with a reddish pulp, which produces the dye.
Theophrastus seems to have felt acutely the need of botanical terms, and there are cases in which he seeks to give a special technical meaning to words in more or less current use. Among such words are carpos = fruit, pericarpion = seed vessel = pericarp, and metra, the word used by him for the central core of any stem whether formed of wood, pith, or other substance.
When ripe, the pericarp is very mealy and agreeable to eat, and would be wholesome, if it were not so extraordinarily astringent. We called this tree the "Nonda," from its resemblance to a tree so called by the natives in the Moreton Bay district. I found the fruit in the dilli of the natives on the 21st June, and afterwards most abundantly in the stomach of the emu.
The macaws flapped their wings, the monkeys ran outward and then stopped, and a simultaneous cry from the voices of both birds and beasts echoed on all sides; and then there was a general chattering and screaming, as though the fall of the great pericarp had given pleasure to all parties. It was very evident from this circumstance why both beasts and birds kept so far out from the tree.
It is now ripe, of a pale red color, about the size of the common gooseberry, and like it is an ovate pericarp of soft pulp enveloping a number of small whitish seeds, and consisting of a yellowish, slimy, mucilaginous substance, with a sweet taste; the surface of the berry is covered glutinous, adhesive matter, and its fruit, though ripe, retains its withered corolla.
The presence or absence of endosperm, its relative amount when present, and the position of the embryo within it, are valuable characters for the distinction of orders and groups of orders. Meanwhile the ovary wall has developed to form the fruit or pericarp, the structure of which is closely associated with the manner of distribution of the seed.
There is a species of goosberry which grows very common about here in open situations among the rocks on the sides of the clifts. they are now ripe of a pale red colour, about the size of a common goosberry. and like it is an ovate pericarp of soft pulp invelloping a number of smal whitish coloured seeds; the pulp is a yelloish slimy muselaginous substance of a sweetish and pinelike tast, not agreeable to me. the surface of the berry is covered with a glutinous adhesive matter, and the frut altho ripe retains it's withered corollar. this shrub seldom rises more than two feet high and is much branched, the leaves resemble those of the common goosberry only not so large; it has no thorns. the berry is supported by seperate peduncles or footstalks of half an inch in length. immence quantities of small grasshoppers of a brown colour in the plains, they no doubt contribute much to keep the grass as low as we find it which is not generally more than three inches, the grass is a narrow leaf, soft, and affords a fine pasture for the Buffaloe.
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