Familiar enough is the distinction between dry fruits, such as a pea pod and fleshy ones like oranges, and this quality of being fleshy or dry is practically universal. Among fleshy fruits a few well-known types may be mentioned, such as the orange, tomato, grape, gooseberry, and cranberry, all true _berries_. There are, of course, thousands of less familiar examples of berries, but, whether with a hard rind as in the orange or not, they are a direct development, or often a mere swelling of the ovary, with sometimes the adhering calyx, and contain the seed. In apples and pears, known as _pomes_, the fleshy part is a development of part calyx and part the receptacle upon which the ovary is supported while still in the flower. The ovary in these fruits is the parchmentlike interior which contains the seed. Plums and cherries, which have a single stone, instead of numerous seeds buried in the flesh, are known as drupes. These familiar examples are matched by thousands of others of which we hear nothing, all _drupes_ and all formed directly from the ripened ovary and without much change, except the increase of size, juiciness and large development of the tiny immature seed, now transformed into a stone. In the watermelon, pumpkin, and related plants, is still another kind of fleshy fruit, called a _pepo_. All of this, including the hard rind, is transformed ovary and calyx completely incorporated, and forming in the pumpkin perhaps the largest fleshy fruit known. In a considerable number of plants there is not a single ovary, but several, or in some cases many. These occasionally all develop into what is called an aggregate fruit, of which examples are the blackberry, mulberry, magnolia, and many others. While it would be logical to think that these fleshy fruits were designed to make delicious food for man, that, in the light of what we have seen to be the real function of the flower, is an assumption which, while flattering, is far from the truth. It is much more certain that fleshy fruits help plants in the dispersal of their seeds and that this fleshy, juicy character is just one more device of nature to see to it that not only do plants produce seeds, but that the seeds are carried and so spread the plant over considerable areas. Birds and animals eat such fruits in enormous quantities and, in fact, bird migrations are thought to be not so much response to winter cold as to the fact that fruits are scarce then. When it is remembered that some birds make tremendous flights, often over 10,000 miles in a few days, their capacity to spread seeds through their droppings may be imagined. In the chapter on plant distribution some truly remarkable cases of such seed dispersal will be given.