Mr. Darwin has devoted no small portion of his valuable life to tracing, in two bulky volumes, the Descent of Man. Yet I suppose it is probable that in our narrow anthropinism we should have refused to listen to him had he given us two volumes instead on the Descent of Walnuts. Viewed as a question merely of biological science, the one subject is just as important as the other. But the old Greek doctrine that 'man is the measure of all things' is strong in us still. We form for ourselves a sort of pre-Copernican universe, in which the world occupies the central point of space, and man occupies the central point of the world. What touches man interests us deeply: what concerns him but slightly we pass over as of no consequence. Nevertheless, even the origin and development of walnuts is a subject upon which we may profitably reflect, not wholly without gratification and interest.
This kiln-dried walnut on my plate, which has suggested such abstract cogitations to my mind, is shown by its very name to be a foreign production; for the word contains the same root as Wales and Welsh, the old Teutonic name for men of a different race, which the Germans still apply to the Italians, and we ourselves to the last relics of the old Keltic population in Southern Britain. It means 'the foreign nut,' and it comes for the most part from the south of Europe. As a nut, it represents a very different type of fruit from the strawberry and raspberry, with their bright colours, sweet juices, and nutritious pulp. Those fruits which alone bear the name in common parlance are attractive in their object; the nuts are deterrent. An orange or a plum is brightly tinted with hues which contrast strongly with the surrounding foliage; its pleasant taste and soft pulp all advertise it for the notice of birds or monkeys, as a means for assisting in the dispersion of its seed. But a nut, on the contrary, is a fruit whose actual seed contains an abundance of oils and other pleasant food-stuffs, which must be carefully guarded against the depredations of possible foes. In the plum or the orange we do not eat the seed itself: we only eat the surrounding pulp. But in the walnut the part which we utilise is the embryo plant itself; and so the walnut's great object in life is to avoid being eaten. Accordingly, that part of the fruit which in the plum is stored with sweet juices is, in the walnut, filled with a bitter and very nauseous essence. We seldom see this bitter covering in our over-civilised life, because it is, of course, removed before the nuts come to table. The walnut has but a thin shell, and is poorly protected in comparison with some of its relations, such as the American butternut, which can only be cracked by a sharp blow from a hammer--or even the hickory, whose hard covering has done more to destroy the teeth of New Englanders than all other causes put together, and New England teeth are universally admitted to be the very worst in the world. Now, all nuts have to guard against squirrels and birds; and therefore their peculiarities are exactly opposite to those of succulent fruits. Instead of attracting attention by being brightly coloured, they are invariably green like the leaves while they remain on the tree, and brown or dusky like the soil when they fall upon the ground beneath; instead of being enclosed in sweet coats, they are provided with bitter, acrid, or stinging husks; and, instead of being soft in texture, they are surrounded by hard shells, like the coco-nut, or have a perfectly solid kernel, like the vegetable ivory.