you know, is the fruit of the fir and pine family of trees. Notice that it consists of a number of dry hard scales. Each scale is a single fruit. It is the ripened pistil of the flower, but the pistil in this instance, instead of being a hollow receptacle for the seed, is simply a leaf, with the seed attached to its upper surface.
"As the cone ripens, this pistil-leaf becomes a dry scale, which curls up, and sheds its seed, leaving it to blow away or fall to the ground.
"The firs and pines are often called
cone-bearing trees, because they are the only trees which bear fruit of this kind. "What is the first distinction we have found then between the oak and the fir?""The fruit of the oak," said Fred, "is a nut, which we call an acorn, and its seed is a di-cotyledon; the fruit of the fir is a cone with dry scale-seeds.""We will next examine the stems of the oak and thefir," said Mr. Wilson. "I have a good specimen of each of them here. If you look into them closely, you will not be able to find any difference in the appearance of the two. In each stem there is the same central pith-spot, with the same ringlayers of wood round it, and the same outer covering of bark.