grasses are painted with wonderful delicacy and accuracy. We have heard it called a pre-Raphaelite picture; but we should like to learn what pre-Raphaelite artist ever attempted any thiug in this style. There is a small sea piece, by Dr. Ruggles, representing the wreck of the San Francisco, after she had been deserted by her passengers and crew, which has much merit, particularly as the work of an amateur. The motion of the waves, and the details of the wreck, are represented with remarkable accuracy; for there are very few of our painters who give any proofs in their pictures of ever having looked upon the ocean. We have seen a picture of this same scene, with the Three Bells lying by, and the yards placed on the after-parts of the mast. R. W. Hubbard has a sober little landscape, called "New England Hill Scenery," which, without any brilliant pretensions, is a very excellent picture, evidently the production of an intelligent student of

nature.

As compared with last years' exhibition there is very little change in the general look of the galleries, but there are fewer pictures, by some fifty, the number now is but 398; it has been usually above 400; there are no architectural drawings nor designs, and but few water-colors. There is one encouraging fact connected with the Academy, it is the last exhibition that will ever be held in the present building, which has been sold, leaving the Academy some fifty thousand dollars profit; and we hope that when they erect a new building they will make some changes in their constitution and adapt their institution to the existing state of art in this country. What they most need is a perpetual exhibition, for these annual shows are very absurd in an artistic view, and can only be allowed on the score of profit. They create a temporary excitement which subsides before the exhibition is half over, and

the so-called patrons of art imagine that nothing more is to be heard of art and artists until the next opening. There is such a higgledy-piggledy collection of all sorts of pictures in every conceivable style and every possible size, of all sorts of subjects; high, low, serious, grim, comic, historical, animals, fruits, landscapes, portraits, miniatures, and full lengths, high toned, and low toned, that it is a sheer impossibility for one pair of eyes to see them all and form any just idea of their merits. Such an exhibition is like a concert where all sorts of music, in all sorts of keys, are played on all sorts of instruments, without the slightest connection with each other. To look at a picture properly so as to be able to appreciate the design of the artist, provided he have any, it is necessary to look at it by itself, from the point of view which the artist intended; to imbue the mind with its sentiment, and adapt the eye to its tone. But how can this be done in a gallery of four hundred new paintings all differing from each other? How is it possible to pass from a Shegogueian group of infants in pink frocks to a Huntingtonian scripture piece full of dark purple tints, and enjoy the beauties of both? or, after filling the eye with light from one of Church's sunsets, to pass on to Cropsey's cold and rigid Bay of Genoa; or from Mrs. Spencer's laughing infant to Hicks's solemn Bishop? Such rapid and violent contrasts cause people to form rash and unjust opinions of artists whose pictures look entirely different in their studios from what they do in the Academy. If there were a gallery constantly open, artists might send their works whenever they were finished, and the public could then look on one picture at a time, and not be compelled, as they are now, to take in at one rapid glance a view of every thing that has been produced by all the artists of the city during the year.

A

PLANTS and flowers were the Earth's first-born progeny; they sprang out of her bosom and crowned her with verdure and beauty. The plains covered themselves with waving grasses, and the mountains with majestic forests; the silvery willow and the lofty poplar bent over the banks of rivers, and repeated in their trembling, murmuring leaves, the gentle ripple and the low purling of the stream. The Ocean, also, had its woods and its prairies in the depth of its abysses; purple Algae were suspended in festoons from the sides of its rocks, and gigantic fucus rose from the bottom of the sea and danced upon the dark green waves. Cedars and pines, with their sombre pyramids, formed dark borders around the white fields of eternal snow and dazzling glaciers. Humble mosses and lowly lichens covered the gray granite of the North, and offered, in the midst of unbroken winter, warmth and food to the reindeer of the Laplander, whilst the palm tree of the South, in its lofty majesty, defied the burning sun of the tropics, and gave shade and luscious fruit in abundance.

So much Revelation itself has told us. The rest is left to that innate thirst of knowledge, the gratification of which is the highest of all earthly enjoyments. Still, we are not quite left to ourselves, for aid is promised us, even now, from on high. "Go into a field of flowers," said the Lord to Ezra, "where no house is built, and there I will come and talk with thee." And who has not felt the truth of good old Cowley's quaint verse:

"If we could open and intend our eye,
We all, like Moses, would espy

E'en in a bush the radiant Delty."

Thus, even now, travellers tell us occasionally, a wondrous tale of barren islands being covered with luxuriant forests, and of naked rocks being clothed with rich verdure. We have learned how Nature proceeds, even in our day, to let the grass grow, and the herb and the tree yielding fruit, on spots where before all was sterility, or the elements alone reigned supremely.

For every now and then we hear of some new land, fresh from the hands of the Creator, and destined for ages so distant that human knowledge cannot foresee them. Lava streams that have flown from restless craters, begin at last to cool, and life takes possession of them. Thus in the still hot lava of Mt. Etna the Indian fig is planted largely by the Sicilians, to render those desolate regions capable of cultivation. It strikes its strong, wellarmed creepers into the fissures of the black, fiery mass, and soon extends roots into every crevice of the rock. Slowly, but with ever increasing force, the tender fragile fibre then bursts the large blocks. asunder, and finally covers them with fertile soil and a luxuriant vegetation. At other times vast tracts of sea-bottom are dyked in and drained; a thousand varieties of mosses gradually fill it up, and form by their unceasing labor a rich vegetable mould for plants of larger growth. Or truly new lands are suddenly seen to claim a place upon our globe. An earthquake shakes a continent and upheaves the mighty ocean, until cities crumble into ruins and the proud ships of man are ingulfed in the bottomless depths of the

the habitual mood of Nature, is restored as if it had never been broken. Only, where yesterday the ocean's mighty swell passed freely, there to-day an island has risen from the bosom of the deep. Vast rocky masses suddenly raise their bare heads above the boiling waters and greet the heavens above. Such was the origin of Stromboli, of St. Helena, and of Tristan d'Acunha. Or the busy host of corals, after having built for a thousand years the high ramparts of their marvellous rings, at last rise to a level with the surface; they die, having done their duty in all the great household of Nature, and bequeathe to man a low, filat, circular island which now first beholds the sweet light of day, above the dark waves of the ocean. Then come other hosts of busy servants of the Almighty, to do their duty. A soft, silky, network of gay, bright colors, hides after a few days the nakedness of the rock. It is a moss of the simplest plants we know: nothing but simple cells and wondrously shortlived. They die and disappear, leaving apparently no perceptible trace behind' them; still, they have not lived and labored in vain. A delicate, faint tinge, little more, is left behind, and in that mere shadows of things gone by lies the germ of a future, mighty growth. Years pass, and the shadow grows darker; the spots begin to run together, and then follow countless hosts of lichens, a kind of humble mosses, which the great and pious Linnæus touchingly called the bondslaves of Nature, because they are chained to the rock on which they grow, and, after death, are buried in the soil which they make and improve for others only. Little ugly, blackish-brown or pale-white plants as they are, but niggardly supported by the thin air of mountain tops, they show us that there are rich garments and humble wealth and poverty among plants as well as among men. The lowliest and humblest of plants, these lichens become, however, the most useful servants of Nature, which here in an equal degree as in the other works of the Almighty, afford innumerable proofs that, throughout creation, the grandest and most complicated ends are obtained by the employment of the simplest means. These tiny, faintly colored cups live, truly aerial plants, on the most sterile rock, without a particle of mould or soil beneath them, nourished alone by invisible moisture in the atmosphere. Modestly choosing the most exposed situations, they spread line by line, inch by inch, and push up the little urns which crown their short stems, amidst

rain, frost and snow. In these urns they treasure up their minute dustlike seeds, until they ripen; a small lid which has until then been held back by elastic threads, now suddenly rises, and as from a miniature mortar they shoot forth little yellow balls, which cover the ground around them. And thus they work on, quiet, unobserved and unthanked. Dressed in the plainest garb of Nature, growing more slowly than any other plant on earth, they work unceasingly, until as their last and greatest sacrifice, they have to dig their own graves! For Providence has given them a powerful oxalic acid, which eats its way slowly into the rock; water and other moisture is caught in the minute indentations, it is heated and frozen, until it rends the crumbling stone into fragments, and thus aids in forming a soil. Centuries often pass, and generations after generations of these humble bondslaves perform their cruel duty, before the eye can see a real change.

Now, however, comes a faint but clear tinge of green. It is a mere film still, but visible to the naked eye, and showing the higher and more luxuriant forms of graceful mosses, mixed with fungi which interpose their tiny globes and miniature umbrellas. They come, we know not whence, for the slightest crevice in the bare rock suffices to arrest some of the invisible germs which are constantly floating in the air, and affords them a home. They yield nothing in industry and perseverance to their humble predecessors; hardy little laborers in the same great work, they seem to delight in the clouds and storms of a wintry season, when all other verdure fades. They find a home, and live and thrive with equal contentment in the burning cinders of volcanic islands, like Ascension Island, on which they formed the first green crust after it had risen from the ocean, and on the tempest-beaten boulders of Norwegian granite, which they cover with a scarlet coating, well known as the violet stone and full of rich, sweet perfume. As they wither and die, minute layers of soil are formed, one after another, until grasses and herbs can find a foothold: shrubs with their hardy roots now begin to interlace the loose fragments of earth and to bind the very stones to a more permanent structure. The ground grows richer and richer, until at last the tree springs from the soil, and, where once the ocean and the tempest alone beat on the bare rock, there we see now the lordly monarch of the forest raise its lofty crown, and under its rich foliage shelter bird and beast

from the spray and the storm. Soon allis fertile meadow, tangled thicket and wide-spreading forest. Nor is this always and necessarily a slow, painful progress. The bold navigator Boussingault witnessed once, in the south of this continent, one of those stupendous earthquakes which seem to rend the the very foundations of our globe. Mountains rose and plains were changed into lakes. Huge masses of porphyry were scattered over fertile fields and covered all vegetation, changing the bright prairie into a scene of utter desolation. Ten short years later the great captain was again on the same spot. But what a change! The bare wild masses were covered with a young luxuriant grove of locusts, and a thousand cattle were grazing on the hills.

Thus we are taught how Nature proceeds, in our day, from the green matter gathering on our ponds to the giant tree of the forest. But if we turn to the individual plant-how little do we as yet know of its simple structure! Who can solve the mystery that pervades its silent yet ever-active life? There is something in the very stillness of that unknown power which awes and subdues us.

Man may

forcibly obstruct the path of a growing twig, but it turns quietly aside and moves patiently, irresistibly on, in its appointed way. Wood and iron-even powerful steam-they all obey him and become the crouching slaves of his intellect. But the life of the lowest of plants defies him. He may extinguish it, to be sure; but to make use of a living plant, he must obey it, study its wants and tendencies, and mould, in fact, his own proud will to the humblest grass that grows at his feet. Thus we have learned the biography of plants, a few events of which are not without interest even to the general ob

consist each only of a single cell, although in varied and often most elegant forms, with a brilliant display of bright color.

The first germ of a plant, then, has already a life-for it feeds, works and produces. It takes all its nutriment from without. How, we know not, for although plants have no table hanging at their gates with a surly No admittance; although they work. on the contrary, before every body's eyes, unfortunately human eyes are not strong enough to discern the mysterious process that is going on in their minute chambers. Even armed with the most powerful microscope, we cannot penetrate the mystery, and know not yet by what incomprehensible instinct these diminutive cells, all unaided, pick up and select their food and arrange the new material so as to present us at last with a perfect double of the graceful palm, the queenly Victoria or the gigantic Baobab. It heightens the wonder that all this power lies in a seed minute enough to be wafted invisibly by a breath of air. And yet it must be endowed with most subtle and varied gifts, so that out of the same food plants are enabled to form the thousand rare substances they produce: now bringing forth nutritious and agreeable food for man, now yielding materials most valuable to the arts of life, and now ministering to the vilest wants of degenerate man and arming him with deadly poison.

But these little cells are not consumers only; they live and work not for the day merely, but for the future also. An almost invisible point in the cell begins to swell and to increase, as it consumes first the colorless fluid, then the soft substance, and at last even the tissue of the outer walls of the cell, until-already at this early stage of vegetable life-death ensues, and out of death comes new life. The old cell dies, giving birth indeed, as a mother, to other cells, and thus gradually building up the full-grown plant. The young ones leave their former home, after an equally mysterious design, according to the position they are hereafter to occupy in the structure of the plant, and the function they are destined to perform.

Here is the great turning point in the history of vegetable life. All plants consist of cells of the same kind and of the same round or oblong form-but the arrangement and the subsequent shape of these cells differ in each variety of plants. The finger of the Almighty writes on the transparent walls of these microscopic cells as momentous words as those that appeared in flames on the gorgeous walls of the Syrian palace. Only

other remains within, grows harder and thicker, until it can expand no longer; the thickening substance coats the inner walls, fills up the interior, and thus gives strength and firmness to the beautiful structure. In some plants this development of new cells goes on slowly; in others with truly marvellous rapidity, as in one of the fungi, which forms two thousand visible cells in a single minute!

But the minute, delicate form would be but short-lived, and fall an easy prey to the first rude breath of air, if Nature did not here also instil the great lesson, that Union is Strength. That wondrous chemical laboratory, contained in the mysterious seclusion of each cell, produces next a current which permeates the walls, and glues cell to cell, so that, hardly developed, it cannot move from the spot, and, though provided with life and strength for long generations, it is still, like Prometheus, bound for ever on the rock of the adjoining cell. At the extremities of plants this glue hardens into a thick varnish; it is this material which gives density and mechanical strength to the so-called woody fibres; it forms the bark of trees and covers the plum with a coating of wax. It appears like a viscid layer on the leaves of water-plants, which are thus made slippery to the touch and impermeable to water, or as a blue powder on our cabbage, which can be wholly immersed without being wetted. Only here and there, but even in the hardest and fullest cells, tubes of a spiral form are left open. Some are mere small jail windows, imperceptible to the naked eye, and only lately discovered; but they always meet, in unfailing regularity, with a similar tiny lookout from the neighbor, so that Nature evidently does not seem to approve of solitary confinement. Others are larger, and serve as air-passages; for nature, a good architect, knows the necessity of ventilation, and provides for it in the humblest of lowly mosses with as much care as in the lofty dome of the Universe. In aquatic plants, moreover, these saine tubes render them buoyant, as in one of the huge fucui that grow from the bottom of the ocean. All along the immense stem, which reaches from the vast deep up to the light of day, little vessels occur, filled with air, and it is by these tiny balloons, thus continued from story to story, that the enormous leaves of the

giant plant are buoyed up and finally enabled to float on the surface, covering the waves with an immense carpet of verdure. And thus, with unerring regularity, which, in an almost endless variety of forms, still maintains those great laws of Nature that betoken the will of the Most High, these same cells have been formed, not only in the parent plant for its next successor, but during thousands of generations; and that on all parts of the earth, in the same way, the same shape! Well may we, then, with a distinguished German botanist, look upon the vegetable world as the rich altarcloth in the temple of God where we worship the beautful and the sublime, because it is His handiwork.

Plants live, then, and feed. Little do we commonly think, little do we therefore know of the way in which they live and feed. We see animals take their food openly and grossly, in the most conspicuous and eminent part of their body; they tear and swallow, ruminate or masticate. We ourselves do something in that line. But delicate plants hide the coarse process of nutrition under ground, or within the close walls of each tiny cell. There, with wondrous art, and never resting day or night, summer or winter, they draw a few simple elements, mainly water, from air and soil, and by their own power and labor; live upon them not only, but draw all the material necessary for an almost unlimited growth, until the smallest seed has upreared gigantic masses of wood and foliage, and the grain of mustard has grown into a tree, in whose branches the fowls of heaven have their habitation. Each little microscopic cell is its own busy chemist, dissolving all it needs, even small particles of silica, in water, and changing it into food and new substances. The material we know, and the fact that it is introduced-but then we stand again at the threshold of that mystery with which Nature surrounds all first beginnings. The night of the cell, where this strange process is going on, is the same as that in which the grain has to be buried, in order to rise once more to light as a tender blade. We are again taught that the knowledge of first causes belongs to Him alone, who allows the eye of man to see final causes only, and even those, as yet, merely through a glass, dimly.

The general process of feeding, in a plant, as far as known, is simply this: The universal and indispensable nutrient substances, and, at the same time, that by means of which all the rest are conveyed