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ters, had they been given, would have been little attended to; and hence the numbers found favourable to the cure of particular complaints: the aliments of domestic creatures, or deemed injurious to them. Modern science may wrap up the meaning of its epithets in Greek and Latin terms; but in very many cases they are the mere translations of these despised "old vulgar names." What pleasure it must have afforded the poor sufferer in body or in limb, what confidence he must have felt for relief, when he knew that the good neighbour who came to bathe his wounds, or assuage his inward torments, brought with him such things as "all-heal, break-stone, bruise-wort, gout-weed, feverfew" (fugio), and twenty other such comfortable mitigators of his afflictions! Why, their very names would almost charm away the sense of pain! The modern recipe contains no such terms of comfortable assurance; its meanings are all dark to the sufferer, its influence unknown. And then the good herbalist of old professed to have plants which were “all good;" they could assuage anger by their “loose strife;" they had " 'honesty, true-love, and heart's-ease." The cayenues, the soys, the catsups, and extra-tropical condiments of these days were not required, when the next thicket would produce "poor man's pepper, sauce-alone, and hedge-mustard:" and the woods and wilds around, when they yielded such delicate viands as "fat-hen, lamb'squarters, way-bread, butter, and eggs, with codlins and cream," afforded no despicable bill of fare. No one ever yet thought of accusing our old simplers of the vice of avarice or the love of lucre; yet their "thrift" is always to be seen; we have their humble "pennywort, herb-twopence, moneywort, silverweed, and gold." We may smile, perhaps, at the cognomens, or the commemorations of friendship or of worth, recorded by the old simplers, at their herbs, "Bennett, Robert, Christopher, Gerrard, or Basil;" but do the names so bestowed by modern science read better, or sound better? It has "Lightfootia, Lapeyrousia, Hedwigia, Schkuhria, Scheuchzeria ;" and surely we may admit, in common benevolence, such partialities as "good King Henry, sweet William, sweet Marjory, sweet Cicely, Lettuce, Mary Gold, and Rose." There are epithets, however, so very extraordinary, that we must consider them as mere perversions, or, at least, incapable of explanation at this period. The terms of modern science waver daily; names undergo an annual change, fade with the leaf, and give place to others; but the ancient terms, which some may ridicule, have remained for centuries, and will yet reremain till nature is swallowed up by art. No; let our

ancient herbalists, "a grave and wiskered race," retain the honours due to their labours, which were most needful and important ones at those periods; by them were many of the casualties and sufferings of man and beast relieved; and by aid of perseverance, better constitutions to act upon, and faith to operate than we possess, they probably effected cures which we moderns should fail to accomplish if attempted.

OF VEGETABLE NATURE.

Ir has been already stated, that every substance known on earth is divided into three kingdoms-mineral, vegetable, and animal. The prince of naturalists thus distinguishes these kingdoms : "Stones grow; vegetables grow and live; and animals grow, live, and feel." The existence of all vegetables may be regarded as mechanical, or as similar to that of an animal when asleep, during which time his functions proceed without consciousness. The mechanism of plants is, however, most wonderful, and bespeaks the contrivance of an all-wise and all-powerful Creator. A seed, which is thrown into the earth by the husbandman, is similar in its construction to the egg of an animal. The earth acts upon it by means as inexplicable to man as that by which the sitting of a hen on an egg converts it into a chicken. In a few days its two ends open; and from one of them issues a green plant, and from the other a number of fibrous threads. Whatever was the position of the seed, the green sprout struggles through the soil upward into the air, and the fibrous shoots strike downward into the ground, and imbibe, transmit, or pump up the moisture as nourishment to the plant. Nothing is more wonderful than the means of nature for the preservation of seeds, and the contrivances by which they are distributed. Some seeds are provided with downy wings, as the dandelion; others are swallowed whole by animals, and voided again in distant places; and all are blown about by the winds, and preserved by their coverings till excited into germination by the heat of the sun's rays in the following spring. Botanists have divided all plants into 24 classes, and 121 orders; and they have discovered 2000 genera, 30,000 species, and varieties of the species without number. Each has its peculiar habitation, and each adapts the nutriment derived from the same earth, so differently, that, by an unknown agency, it produces all the degrees of flavour, odour, poison, and nutriment, which we find in various plants.

Each tree, each plant, from all its branching roots,
Amid the glebe small hollow fibres shoots;
Which drink with thirsty mouths the vital juice,
And to the limbs and leaves their food diffuse.

Peculiar pores peculiar juice receive,

To this deny, to that admittance give.-BLACKMORE.

FRUITS AND FLOWERS.

FRUITS, which afford us so many luxuries, are, in fact, nothing more than the covering, or the natural production which protects the seed of plants, and called by botanists Pericarps Some pericarps are pulpy, as apples, pears, nectarines, &c.; some are hard, as nuts; and some scaly, as the cones of fir-trees.

Your contemplation further yet pursue;
The wondrous world of vegetables view!
See various trees their various fruits produce,
Some for delightful taste, and some for use.
See sprouting plants enrich the plain and wood,
For physic some, and some design'd for food.

See fragrant flowers, with different colours dy'd,

On smiling meads unfold their gaudy pride.-BLACKMORE.

It must not then be forgotten that the design of the beautiful flowers which cover the earth is to create the seed of future trees;-that the leaves or corolla of the flowers are merely protections of the delicate pistil, stamen, and germen; in which last is produced the seeds, and for their protection, the pericarp, which we call the fruit.

Go, mark the matchless workings of the Power
That shuts within the seed the future flower;

Bids these in elegance of form excel,

In colour these, and those delight the smell;

Sends Nature forth, the daughter of the skies,

To dance on earth, and charm all human eyes.-CowPER.

LINNÆUS seized on the variations in the number of the stamens, as a means of classing the vegetable kingdom into twenty-four denominations. Those flowers having one pistil, and but one stamen, he called monandria; those of two stamens he called diandria; three, triandria; so on up to twenty stamens; and above twenty, polyandria. When he found stamens in one flower, and pistils in another, on the same plant, he called them diecia; and on different plants, polygamia. When altogether invisible, cryptogamin. Other distinctions in each class produce a division of the classes, called orders. A further division of the orders,

founded on distinctions in the nectarium, lead to the genera. Other divisions of the genera, in regard to the root, trunk, leaves, &c., lead to species; and casual differences in species are called varieties. The natural substances found in all vegetables are, sugar in the sugar-cane, beet, carrots, &c.; gum, or mucilage, which oozes from many trees; jelly, procured from many fruits; tar, from the bark of trees; bitters, from hops and quassia; and the narcotic principle from the milk of poppies, lettuce, &c. The vegetables of the greatest value to man are those which produce gluten or starch, as wheat, potatoes, barley, beans, &c. Oils are produced by pressing the seeds or kernels of vegetables; as olives, almonds, linseed, &c. Volatile oils are distilled from peppermint, lavender, &c. Wax is collected from all flowers by bees. Resins exude like gum from firs and other trees, and are known as balsams, varnishes, turpentine, tar, pitch, &c. Of this class, too, is Indian rubber, which is a gum, that exudes from certain trees in South America. Iron also mixes with the substance of most vegetables, and is the cause of the beautiful colours of flowers. Pot-flowers; the cryptogamia contain the natural tribes of ferns, mosses, seaweeds, and mushrooms. Healthy vegetables perspire water by the under part of their leaves equal to one-third of their weight every twenty-four hours; by which part they also give out oxygen. Nor do they derive their substance in a principal degree from the matter of the soil in which they grow, but they are created by a vital principle of their own out of air and water, and of the imperceptible matters combined with air and water, from which are derived all their distinctions of smell, taste, and substance!

Hail, Source of Being! Universal Soul

Of heaven and earth! Essential Presence, hail!
By THEE the various vegetative tribes,

Wrapt in a filmy net, and clad with leaves,

Draw the live ether, and imbibe the dew:

By THEE disposed into congenial soils,

Stands each attractive plant, and sucks and swells
The juicy tide, a twining mass of tubes:

At THY Command the vernal sun awakes

The torpid sap, detruded to the root

By wintry winds; that now in fluent dance,

And lively fermentation, mounting, spreads

All this innumerous-colour'd scene of things.-THOMSON.

Some plants exhibit signs of great sensibility, besides the effects visible from the presence or absence of the rays of the sun in nearly all these are the sensitive plant, whose leaves drop on being touched by the hand; and Venus's

mouse-trap, which closes on any insect that goes into it, and stings it to death.

FIELD FLOWERS.

YE field flowers! the gardens eclipse you, 'tis true;
Yet, wildings of nature! I doat upon you-

For ye waft me to summers of old,

When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight,
And when daisies and buttercups gladden'd my sight,
Like treasures of silver and gold.

I love you for lulling me back into dreams

Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams,
And of broken blades breathing their balm ;
While the deer was seen glancing in sunshine remote,
And the deep mellow crush of the wood-pigeon's note,
Made music that sweetened the calm.

Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune

Than ye speak to my heart, little wildings of June!
Of old ruinous castles ye tell;

I thought it delightful your beauties to find

When the magic of nature first breathed on my mind,
And your blossoms were part of her spell.

Even now what affections the violet awakes;
What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,

Can the wild water-lily restore !

What landscapes I read in the primrose's looks,
What pictures of pebbles and minnowy brooks,

In the vetches that tangled the shore!

Earth's cultureless buds! to my heart ye were dear
Ere the fever of passion, or ague of fear,

Had scathed my existence's bloom;

Once I welcome you more, in life's passionless stage,
With the visions of youth to revisit my age,

And I wish you to grow on my tomb.-CAMPBELL.

VEGETABLE MECHANICS.

THE ROCK ROSE, AND THE GRASS OF PARNASSUS.-The common rose rock (Cistus helianthemum) is a plentiful wild flower, blowing, during the summer months, in dry, rocky, or calcareous places, beautifying the patches of withered herbage with its golden blossoms, and giving an air of sunshine and gaiety to the barren rock. If you take a small probe, or a hog's bristle, and irritate any of the numerous stamens of this flower, you will see them fall back from the pistil and spread themselves upon the petals, exhibiting a very pretty example of vegetable irritability. A similar instance may be remarked of the spontaneous approach and

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