Friday, August the 26th, 2005
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“Of course, you know my friend the squirting cucumber. If you don't, that can be only because you've never looked in the right place to find him… If peradventure you chance to brush up against the plant accidentally, or you irritate it of set purpose with your foot or your cane, then, as Mr Rider Haggard would say, ‘a strange thing happens': off jumps the little green fruit with a startling bounce, and scatters its juice and pulp and seeds explosively through a hole in the end where the stem joined on to it. The entire central part of the cucumber… squirts out elastically through the breach in the outer wall, leaving the hollow shell behind as a mere empty windbag.” — Grant Allen, Science In Arcady