The Pineapple is one of the most delicious fruits, and is interesting in every way. The little sharp spines on the edges of the leaves keep animals off, and also make it a little difficult to harvest. The workmen must wear leather trousers to prevent their being cut and torn by the leaves. In Queensland the pineapple is grown in big fields, and about ten thousand fruits (worth about one penny each) can be got from a single acre. It is also grown in the West Indies, in India, and in other tropical countries. If you examine the horny outside skin of the fruit with a sharp penknife, you will find that each little piece of the mosaic is a flower in itself; with a little care the bracts, three sepals, three petals, and six stamens can be distinguished. The whole stem and all its flowers unite to make a compound fruit. Most varieties have no seeds. It is a native of South America. It is, however, our home fruits, Apples, Pears, Gooseberries, Strawberries, Raspberries, and Currants, that are most important to us in Britain. The Wild Crab Apple is found from Drontheim, in Norway, to the Caucasus, and grows over the whole of Europe. Apples were known to the Greeks and Romans. Unfortunately, in our own climate there are great dangers in the orchard. A touch of frost when the flowers are ripe will very likely kill the tender, green, baby apple. It is perhaps in Canada and North America that the growing of apples and pears is most carefully looked after. Our beautiful old orchards in Devonshire and other places, with comfortable grass below the trees, and moss-covered, picturesque, ancient trunks, are not found in the New World. The regular lines of young trees in bare, carefully-kept earth, with every stem whitewashed and treated with the most scientific monotony, produce a most valuable return. But in this country those who are careful and scientific sometimes obtain extraordinary results. It is on record that a man with a holding of twenty-nine acres near Birmingham made £600 a year from this small plot and paid £250 for labour on it.[112] [112] _Journal Royal Horticultural Society_, vol. 27, part iv. Mr. Gladstone also said that the future of British farmers depended upon jam. Yet it must be remembered that the trees take a long time to come into bearing, and the crop is most uncertain. CHAPTER XX WANDERING FRUITS AND SEEDS Ships and stowaway seeds--Tidal drift--Sheep, broom, migrating birds--Crows and acorns--Ice--Squirrels--Long flight of birds--Seeds in mud--Martynia and lions--The wanderings of Xanthium--Cocoanut and South Sea Islands--Sedges and floods--Lichens of Arctic and Antarctic--Manna of Bible--The Tumble weeds of America--Catapult and sling fruits--Cow parsnips--Parachutes, shuttlecocks, and kites--Cotton--The use of hairs and wings--Monkey's Dinner-bell--Sheep-killing grasses.