to be considered as something more than preparations of a single plant for the action of the Spring. All plants having this habit are adapted to drought during the time that their vegetative action is suspended; and hence, in those climates where the Winter is cold and moist, if they are not taken up and dried, they rot, or at best are greatly deteriorated. If a potato were allowed to be self-sown for a number of years, the tubers would degenerate to those small, waxy, and tasteless ones, which were first found in the American mountains; and if the dahlia were allowed to grow in the same manner, it would soon degenerate into a single flower, of diminutive size, and very little beauty. The tulip, the ranunculus, the anemone, and a vast number of those bulbous and tuberous plants, the flowers of which are so very ornamental, require to be treated in the same manner.

All this shows that every species of accumulation of a plant, whether above ground or below it, that can in any way be considered as related to a stem, bears some analogy to a bud; while the true root, without the crown, which is always a bud or an accumulation of buds, can do nothing—not so much as put out a single fibre. The accumulation in the stem, whether situated above the earth or under it, is therefore an accumulation specially adapted to the action of the sun and the air in the Spring; whereas an accumulation in a real root contributes more to that species of action in the plant, which we have described as being referrible to the root, and whose stimulus is water. These last

suffer in their powers of vegetation, if taken up and dried, just as much as the others suffer by being left in the cold and moist earth.

Those circumstances at once point out the situation for which each kind is adapted. The tuber is adapted to dry places, and so is the bulb standing above the collet; whereas the root which accumulates below the collet is more adapted for cold and humid situations.

Herbaceous plants which die down in the stems every year, but do not perish in the roots, always thus lay up a store for the ensuing Spring. If the air is to be parched with drought, and the earth also dry, the store is deposited in some kind of stem; and the Spring action bears a considerable analogy to the action of a bud; whereas, if the plant is to be soaked with water during the Winter, or mantled up under the snow, the store is placed in a more downward situation, so that it may be protected from that cold which would not fail to destroy it during a long protracted winter.

Some plants have a curious power of accommodating themselves in this respect; for there are several of the grasses, natives of rather moist situations, which have fibrous roots while they remain there, but if they are transplanted to places which become seasonably dry, the lower part of the stem swells out into a bulb before the upper part withers.

These are a few, and but a few, of the adaptations and preparings of the vegetable tribes for the Spring. We

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do not expect that they will satisfy the inquiring reader, neither do we wish it; for our object is to increase his appetite, and tempt him out into the fields, that he may of his own observation taste, and see how good God is, and how bountifully he has provided for every creature that he has made.

CHAPTER VI.

SPRING FLOWERS.

SUMMER is the grand season of nature's bloom,-the period when those chosen members of the vegetable kingdom which require the utmost ardour of the year to stimulate them to the maximum of their seasonal action, put on their nuptial attire, and display, on mountain, on field, and on fern, many tints of colour, and give out every degree of fragrance that can be named or imagined. Our little work on SUMMER will therefore be the proper one in which to offer a few remarks on the physiology of flowering, with a view of pointing out to common readers the agencies and the means by which the wise and bountiful Author and Governor of nature has seen meet to bring about this most lovely and most important state of the vegetable tribes.

Of the beauty we must say little; it is seen and felt. When the infant is taken into the garden, gay with flowers on stem and shrub, its little hands are eagerly "on the stretch;" its eyes are widely opened, and sparkling with delight; its face is all radiant with smiles; it "coos" and murmurs a language in the ear

of nature, which none but nature can interpret; every muscle of its frame quivers, every articulation moves; and it probably learns more, acquires more of the knowledge and use of the members of its own bodythe first and most valuable of all education-in one half hour among the flowers, than in a whole month in the

nursery.

The nursery! Education is but too often spoiled there; and the body is enfeebled, much in the same manner as the mind is subsequently narrowed, warped, and perverted, in the schools. Among the wealthy, especially, the body is often cruelly bereaved of its infant education, and this because the fond but foolish parents can afford to have their children taken proper care of." The cares of vanity are the curses of man: “Which of you, by taking care, can add one cubit to his stature?" But we may prevent a cubic of the growth, or, which is worse, spoil the quality and usefulness of what does grow. In every rich and luxurious state of society, thousands are deprived of the proper use of their bodies,-virtually maimed and crippled by this ill-directed though well-meant care. If such can continue to afford servants instead of hands, and carriages instead of legs, they may linger out their helpless lives not only without actual suffering, but in the enjoyment of all that can be bought with money. Still, they are inferior creatures; for where is the price that can buy a manly hand, a well-nerved arm, a fleet foot on the lea, or a frame thewed, and sinewed, and tempered, to all the winds of the heaven, and all the toils of the earth?