in its general sense, includes whatever the earth produces for the nourishment and support of animals; as herbs, grain, pulse, hay, corn, and flax, every thing expressed by the Latins under the name fruges.
in Natural History, denotes the last production of a tree or plant, for the propagation or multiplication of its kind; in which sense fruit includes all kinds of seeds, with their furniture, &c.
in Botany, is properly that part of a plant wherein the seed is contained; called by the Latins fructus; and by the Greeks μήλον. The fruit in the Linnæan system is one of the parts of fructification, and is distinguished into three parts, viz. the pericarpium, seed, and receptacle, or receptaculum seminum. See Botany.
Colours extracted from FRUITS. See the article Colour-Making.
Bread-Fruit. See ARTOCARPUS, Botany Index.
FRUITS, with regard to commerce, are distinguished into recent, fresh, and dry.
Recent FRUITS are those sold just as they are gathered from the tree, without any farther preparation; as are most of the productions of our gardens and orchards, sold by the fruiters.
Dry FRUITS are those dried in the sun, or by the fire, with other ingredients sometimes added to them to make them keep; imported chiefly from beyond sea, and sold by the grocers. Such are raisins, currants, figs, capers, olives, cloves, nutmegs, pepper, and other spices; which see under their respective articles.
Under the denomination of dry fruits are also frequently included apples, pears, almonds, filberts, &c.
FRUIT-FLIES, a name given by gardeners and others to a sort of small black flies found in vast numbers among fruit trees, in the spring season, and supposed to do great injury to them. Mr Leeuwenhoek preferred some of these flies for his microscopical observations. He found that they did not live longer than a day or two, but that the females during this time laid a great number of longish eggs. The gardeners who suppose that these flies wound the leaves of the trees, are mistaken: it is true that they feed on their juices; but they have no instruments wherewith they can extract these for themselves: they feed on such as are naturally extravasated; and when there is not a sufficient quantity of these for their purpose, they haunt the places to which the pucerons resort, and feed on the juices which these little creatures extravasate by means of the holes they bore in the leaves with their trunks.
Fruit Stones. The mischiefs arising from the custom which many people have of swallowing the stones of plums and other fruit are very great. The Philosophical Transactions give an account of a woman who suffered violent pains in her bowels for 30 years, returning once in a month or less. At length, a strong purge being given her, the occasion of all these complaints was driven down from the bowels to the anus; where it gave a sensation of distention and stoppage, producing a continual desire of going to stool, but without voiding anything. On the assistance of a careful hand in this case, there was taken out with forceps a ball of an oval figure, of about ten drachms in weight, and measuring five inches in circumference. This had caused all the violent fits of pain which she had suffered for so many years; and, after voiding it, she became perfectly well. The ball extracted looked like a stone, and felt very hard, but it swam in water. On cutting it through with a knife, there was found in the centre of it a plum stone; round which several coats of this hard and tough matter had gathered. Another instance given in the same papers is of a man, who, dying of an incurable colic which had tormented him many years, and baffled the effects of medicines, was opened after death; and in his bowels was found a ball similar to that above mentioned; but somewhat larger, being six inches in circumference, and weighing an ounce and a half. In the centre of this, as of the other, there was found the stone of a common plum, and the coats were of the same nature with those of the former.
These and several other instances mentioned in the same place, sufficiently show the folly of that common opinion that the stones of fruits are wholesome. For though by nature the guts are so defended by their proper mucus, that people very seldom suffer by things of this kind; yet if we consider the various circumvolutions of the guts, their valves and cells, and at the same time consider the hair of the skins of animals we feed on, the wool or down on herbs and fruit, and the fibres, vessels, and nerves of plants, which are not altered by the stomach; it will appear a wonder that instances of this sort of mischief are not much more common. Cherry stones, swallowed in great quantities, have occasioned the death of many people; and there have been instances even of the seeds of strawberries collecting into a lump in the guts, and causing violent disorders, which could not be cured without great difficulty.