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Show 274 EVERGREEN L~AVF.S. from the blossom bwl to the ripened fruit. Not so with the tropical fruits. The trees which produce them have no wintel' of repose, and therefore t~e progress of their fructification is much less rapid. Generally speaking, they remain two years on the twigs, and thus they enjoy both the dry season and the wet; and in all cases where they do so, we find that they are provided with means of protection from the intense action of the sun; and even when they come more rapidly to maturity, we still find the shining rind or capsule. Even if there is a shell, and · that a hard and tough one, we find an external pro· tection, as in the coire which is between the ex· ternal rind of the cocoanut and the shell; and, thus protected, the milky juice of the nut is very cool and refErevsehni ning .t he cold countries, if the leaf or the fruit has to bear both the summer and winter, we have generally the shining epidermis and the shining rind. The leaves of all the evergreen pines, and cypresse·s, and yews, and the whole tribe of the conifeT(£, are smooth, while those of the deciduous larch and taxodium are not. It is true that the leaves of many of what we call evergreens are just as unusual as those of the lime and the mulberry, the latter of which is the last to come and the first to go ; but still they summer and winter on the tree: there are always two successions wholly or partly upon it ; and the fall of the leaf with such trees is in the summer. The common juniper is almost the only native berry which we have that lasts more than one season upon the bush, and it has the firm rind and some of the other characters of those that remain for two seasons in warmer countries. The water-melon is perhaps one of the most re-markable instances that we have of the power of tropical vegetables to obtain moisture in the extreme of drought, and cold in the very violence of heat. In the Indian desert between the valley of the WATER-MELONS. 275 Indus and that of the ~anges, there are many places where the sur~ace, With the exception of here and ~here a crumblmg stone, is nothing but sand . there Is no water, except what has to be drawn fr~m the depth ?f several hundred feet, and the rainy monsoon fometl~es passes over without refreshing the sur-ace wtth one drop of water. Yet even there the water-melons, pl~nted in the dry sand, not onl veg~tate, but attam to a size unknown in the mo!t fertile places of Syria and Egypt. The diameter is often from a foot to a foot and a half and the crops are very abundant. ' |