Explore "The Evolutionist at Large" by Grant Allen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Half-hidden in the luxuriant growth of leaves and flowers that drape the deep side of this green lane, I have just espied a little picture in miniature, a tall wild strawberry-stalk with three full red berries standing out on its graceful branchlets. There are glossy hart's-tongues on the matted bank, and yellow hawkweeds, and bright bunches of red campion; but somehow, amid all that wealth of shape and colour, my eye falls and rests instinctively upon the three little ruddy berries, and upon nothing else. I pick the single stalk from the bank and hold it here in my hands. The origin and development of these pretty bits of red pulp is one of the many curious questions upon which modern theories of life have cast such a sudden and unexpected flood of light. What makes the strawberry stalk grow out into this odd and brightly coloured lump, bearing its small fruits embedded on its swollen surface?
Clearly the agency of those same small birds who have been mainly instrumental in dressing the haw in its scarlet coat, and clothing the spindle-berries with their two-fold covering of crimson doublet and orange cloak.