dewy fields, loving the beauty of the lily which Omnipotence stooped to clothe, and from whose bosom, as from a scroll of heaven, the Redeemer of man taught listening multitudes the lessons of a living faith."

The mere forms of flowers are eminently instructive. We speak not of the beau-ideal of grace and symmetry which fancy florists set up for every special favourite of the parterre; though that, too, challenges high admiration for its sublimating power upon the feelings of cultivators, and for the refined instance it. affords of the goodness of the Creator in endowing the organic beings which he has made subject to man with capacities of improvement under skilful cultivation. But we speak of the types of form which characterise vast groups and families of flowers; and we refer to them as the simple, suasive, all-beauteous models of the great majority of the graceful and useful mouldings and sculpturings and fashionings of art which have ever been practised, or ever will be practised, by the human race. The leaf of the acanthus is well known to have been the model of the capital of the Corinthian pillar, the most elaborate decoration of pure Grecian architecture. But what is that compared to the forms of flowers? Think, for example, of the peerless combinations of curve and contour in the tubes of the Cape-heaths,-in the saucers and vases of the ipomas and convolvuluses,-in the laughing mouths of many of the labiates,-in the wings and keel and banner of the butterfly-shaped pod-bearers,—in the waving folds of the irises,—in the tracery of the passion-flowers,-in the turbans of the martagon lilies,-in the trumpets of the bignonias,— and in the bells of the campanulas and squills. These

last are particularly beautiful, and have ever won the love of peasant and poet, of child and philosopher, for their simple grace and heart-wooing elegance. O how powerfully, too, do they ring into the soul suggestive music about the glories of the Creator! Many a fine use has been made of them in odes and lyrics; but none half so fine as the following:

"Your voiceless lips, O Flowers! are living preachers, Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book,

Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers

From loneliest nook.

'Neath cloister'd boughs each floral bell that swingeth,
And tolls its perfume on the passing air,

Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth
A call to prayer,—

Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column

Attest the feebleness of mortal hand,

But to that fane most catholic and solemn
Which God hath plann'd,—

To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,

Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply,
Its choir the winds and waves, its organ thunder,
Its dome the sky."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ECONOMY OF PLANTS.

CONTRASTS BETWEEN PLANTS AND ANIMALS-FALSE AND TRUE ANALOGIES BETWEEN THEM-ELEMENTARY CELLS OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS AGGREGATIONS OF VEGETABLE CELLS—THE STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONS OF ROOTS-THE STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONS OF LEAVES -THE STRUCTURE, FUNCTIONS, AND USES OF SEEDS AND FRUITS— SUMMARY VIEW OF OTHER WONDERS IN THE ECONOMY OF PLANTS.

PLANTS live and grow; yet, in several great characters, are contrasts to animals.-They feed; but have no digestive system,-no stomach, no intestinal canal. They receive their food in a state nearly ready for assimilation, partly in the form of gases out of the atmosphere and partly in the form of liquid out of water or out of the ground; and they have leaves or equivalent organs aloft in the air for taking in the gases, and roots or equivalent organs down in the water or in the ground for taking in the liquid.—And they move in a variety of ways, yielding to the breeze, pushing their rootlets, unfolding their buds, and, in many instances, making special efforts for forming or dispersing their seeds; yet they have no muscular system,no power of will over their fibres,-no apparatus of locomotion. All their food is brought to them, or deposited under and around them; and they obtain it best, and best secure their entire well-being, by standing as firm fixtures on one spot.-Again, they have

irritability, but no capacity of sensation,-contractile fibres, but no nervous system. And they have ample appliances for the distribution of their aliment through all the interior of all their organs; yet have no circulating system,-nothing corresponding to the heart and arteries and veins of animals. They suffer little or no waste of their main substance, and employ their aliment principally in making additions to that substance, in forming new organs, and in restoring temporary and fallen ones; so that they need no more complex an apparatus for distributing their aliment than something to carry up the liquid from the roots to the leaves, and something to carry down the elaborated liquid and gases from the leaves to the flowers and branches and stem and roots.-And they both inhale gases and exhale them, yet do not breathe. They operate powerfully on the atmospheric air, yet have no respiratory system,-nothing analogous to the airpassages and the lungs of animals. They need no nitrogen for any substance similar to blood or muscle, and very little for any of their constituents; nor do they need a very great deal of oxygen either for making formations within them, or for any other purposes of their economy; but they need enormous supplies of carbon and hydrogen for building up their woody tissues, and for forming all their oily and resinous and starchy secretions; and they therefore reciprocate gases with the atmosphere, not only in a different series from animals, but in a converse series. Plants are essentially carbonaceous, while animals are characteristically nitrogenous; and the former live largely by drinking in carbonic acid, and the latter as largely by breathing it out.

These contrasts are readily observed between all the higher and middle classes of plants, and all the higher and middle classes of animals. But they are not so easily observed, and indeed some of them do not always exist, between the lower classes. "The vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom," it has been remarked, "may be compared to two mighty pyramids, which touch each other by their bases, while their opposite vertices diverge to two infinitely remote points." A number of the very lowest kinds of plants so closely resemble a number of the very lowest kinds of animals that the line of demarcation between them has, in some instances, been matter of doubt or of dispute among the keenest and most competent observers. One of several startling anomalies is, that some things which are proved to be plants have for a time a power of locomotion, while some things which are proved to be animals never have that power. Yet a doubtful object under examination, except in a very few instances, may be readily known to be plant or animal by the following rule:—" If it be irritable to the touch, and move spontaneously, to satisfy its wants, -if it be not deeply rooted in the soil, but only adhere to the surface,-if its body be provided with a central cavity, if it putrefy after death,-if it give out the ammoniacal odour of burnt horn,-and finally, if in its chemical composition there be found an excess of nitrogen over carbon, then we may be certain that it is an animal. But if, on the contrary, the doubtful being under examination enjoy no lasting or spontaneous power of motion,-if it be destitute of an internal cavity,-if it be deeply inserted in the scil, if, when detached, it speedily fade and die,—