Not only Bob, but all four of us blushed with excitement and curiosity. Where could it be and what could it contain, this wonder-field which we had failed to discover in any of our rambles?

"Come along!" cried Frank, setting off at an easy pace; "and if we don't find in my field enough to wonder at and talk about for the rest of the day, say I'm a very dull fellow, and don't go out walking with me any more !"

Not one of us, I am sure, had the least notion of what he was to expect; but the more we guessed the more excited we became with vague anticipation. As we went along we peppered Frank with questions; but however artfully they were put, they never drew from him any answer that conveyed the least information as to the field and its wonders towards which we were wending. Little Bob, who, as well as being the youngest and smallest of the party, was the most excitable, became terribly impatient and was constantly a long way ahead of us-returning on his steps every now and then, like a dog, to urge us on; but Frank took a malicious pleasure in walking leisurely until he reached the unattractive field I have spoken of, and we all stood sulkily about the gate with our guide enjoying the fun of our great disappointment.

66 So you don't like the look of my Wonder-Field?" he said.

"What is there to like in it?" inquired Ned; "I don't see anything very wonderful in it."

"We need not have come so far, if it was only to see a field of grass," grumbled Charley.

"And it isn't even a big field," said Bob, contemptuously.

"Hallo! Master Bob!" cried Frank, "if nobody liked any but big things, how would you come off?"

Bob blushed once more and shifted his place without making any answer; but the feeling of the majority was strongly in favour of little Bob's objection; to their eyes the field was a very commonplace-looking field, without even the secondary merit of size to recommend it.

"We can see a field of grass anywhere," persisted Charley.

"So you can," said Frank, "and if I had thought you had seen all the wonders there are in any one of the fields you've seen before, I should never have thought of bringing you to see this one. My idea is, that if we look about sharply, some of us will find in this little field a good deal more than he expects—multum in parvo, much in little,' you know; or, as Marlowe, a poet, has said of a casket of jewels, 'infinite riches in a little room.'"

I confess that the idea of likening the unromanticlooking field before us to a casket of jewels tickled my fancy so much that from that moment my good temper returned, and I resolved to let Frank Arlington display the hidden riches of his Wonder-Field without further question or opposition on my part.

66

Come, boys!" cried Frank, heartily, "let's see how much there is to be found-and who finds most-in these two acres of grass; and then let's see who happens to know most about what he sees and finds."

The cheerful tone of his voice and the good-tempered assurance of Frank's manner drove objection out of our minds, and we made a simultaneous rush to clamber over the gate, on which he had taken his seat while talking to us.

THE field was nearly square and certainly not more than two acres in extent. On three sides it was enclosed by a whitethorn hedge; on the fourth side it was bounded by the edge of a small coppice of oak and beech trees, the long feathery arms of which stretched far over a loamy bank covered with bramble and blackthorn bushes. In the farther corner, next to the coppice, the hedge was broken, and there was a sort of little pond of tolerably clear water, supplied by a rillet that gurgled through an adjoining field. Close to the gate there were the remains of an old rubbish heap, the bulk of which had long ago been carted away. The field itself was nothing but grass. "I wonder whether any boy ever thought what a won

derful thing grass is ?" said Frank, with a serio-comic look of inquiry addressed to none of us in particular.

I guessed in a moment what Frank's intention was in bringing us to this field, and cried

"Oh! yes, tell us all about grass !"

"That's easily said," replied Frank, "but I'm afraid you'd grow tired of the subject long before I could get to the end of it. In the first place, perhaps you don't know that there are nearly fifteen hundred different species of grass known, at least three hundred of which grow in England!"

"Three hundred?" cried Bob, "and I never saw but one-the same as this that grows in the field here !"

"But, perhaps, if we examine some of this grass we may find that there are half a dozen distinctly different species in every handful you can pluck. Let's see."

Bob was down amongst the grass and back again in a moment with a large handful.

"I thought so," said Frank, taking the grass and sorting the stems. "If you compare these with each other, you'll see that there is a very considerable difference. But I'll tell you a curious thing about grass. No one species will grow, for any length of time, alone. A field sown with one kind of grass-seed soon shows blank patches, which are never covered until some other species of grass finds its way to them and takes root."

"I wonder," said Ned, "how it finds its way."

"Most likely its seed is carried by the wind and dropped on the right spot," replied Frank. "Rain carries seeds in all directions. Seeds are carried by rivers and seas, and disseminated in surprising manners. Fruit of the cashew nut, which grows in Jamaica, has been carried by the

DISTRIBUTION OF SEEDS.

9

Gulf Stream across the Atlantic to the western shore of Scotland, where it might have grown had the soil and climate been favourable. The seeds of a German plant called the Centaury were driven by the wind into the sea and landed on the coast of Sweden. Linnæus records that the Flea Bane, in the course of a century after it was first introduced from Canada into the Botanical Gardens of Paris, spread itself all over France, Italy, Sicily, Belgium, and Germany, its seeds being distributed by the winds. Then birds and animals are great seed carriers, and planters. It is told that the Dutch, with a view to monopolising the trade in nutmegs, extirpated the trees on all the islands in their possession over which they could not keep close watch; but, in a very brief space, the nutmeg tree again sprang up abundantly on those islands, the seeds having been planted by birds. Many seeds are obviously formed for being carried to a distance from the parent plant."

"I know one-the dandelion seed," cried Charley, "that floats away through the air like a little balloon!" "But what lots of seed must be wasted everywhere," said little Bob.

"Fortunately," replied Frank, "or the world would not be large enough to hold half the plants that would clog up its surface. Linnæus, the great botanist, pointed out the fact, that from two seeds of any annual plant there would spring, in the course of twenty years, one million forty-eight thousand five hundred and seventy-six plants. Another botanist, Ray, counted thirty-two thousand seeds in one poppy head, and three hundred and sixty thousand on one tobacco plant!"

"Oh!” cried Bob, after drawing a long breath.