wither;" while the ungodly are compared to "an oak whose leaf fadeth, and a garden that hath no water."

9. Solomon, speaking in the person of the coming Savior, says, "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys." The Savior himself spoke of the righteous as the wheat, and of the wicked as the tares; and he likened11 the kingdom of heaven to a grain of mustard-seed, which, from the smallest beginning, "becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." He also taught of the coming of his kingdom from the parable of the fig-tree; and we are told that in the New Jerusalem was the "tree of life, whose leaves were for the healing of the nations."

10. Flowers speak a varied language, and reach the heart not only in its seasons of joy, but in its hours of sadness also. Nothing can more forcibly remind us of joys forever fled than the pale, perishing flowers of autumn:

"Pale flowers! pale perishing flowers!

Ye're types of precious things;

Types of those bitter moments,
That flit, like life's enjoyments,
On rapid, rapid wings:

Last hours with parting dear ones

(That Time the fastest spends), Last tears in silence shed,

Last words half uttered,

Last looks of dying friends."

C. B. SOUTHEY.

11. We can hardly conceive of any more natural association of ideas than that which makes a rosebud the emblem of infant loveliness; a full-blown rose the type13 of blooming womanhood; and which likens14 extreme old age to the "last leaf" of autumn, which has survived all its kindred, and now, with the approaching blasts of winter, trembles to its fall. As a fitting illustration of the latter of these emblems, we introduce the following gem from a favorite American poet.

1 "THEIR COUNSEL," their own secrets.

2 As'-PEN, a species of poplar.

one thing represents another, etc.; as thelast leaf" may represent old age.

7 LIT'-ER-A-TURE, writings; books, etc. 8 MYS'-TIC, hidden; secret.

3 As-so-CI-A'-TIONS, connected ideas; or, such a connection of ideas that one naturally suggests or calls up others; as when 9 PROF'-LI-GATE, a man abandoned to vice. the leaves of spring remind us of the sea-10 SI-MIL'-I-TUDE, likeness; resemblance. son of youth, of youthful hopes, etc.

4 EMBLEMS, pictures or representations.

5 SERE, dry; withered.

11 VI-CIS'-SI-TUDES, changes.

12 BREV'-I-TY, shortness.

13 TYPE, that which represents something [else.

6 IM-AGE-RY, lively descriptions, in which 14 LIK'-ENS, compares.

2. They say that in his prime',
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down',

Not a better man was found
By the crier on his round
Through the town'.

3. But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
So forlorn';

And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said',
"They are gone'."

4. The mossy marbles rest

On the lips that he has press'd
In their bloom';

And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb'.

5. My grandmamma has said—
Poor old lady'! she is dead
Long ago-

That he had a Roman nose',
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow'.

6. And now his nose is thin',
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff;

And a crook is in his back',
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh'.

I know it is a sin

For me to sit and grin

At him here',

But the old three-corner'd hat,
And the breeches-and all that',
Are so' queer' !

8. And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring-

Let them smile as I do now'

At the old forsaken bough'
Where I cling'.

OLIVER W. HOLMES.

a More solemnity and deeper feeling are expressed by the inflections as here giventhe rising on "so," and the falling on "queer," than would be if these inflections were transposed. Now the meaning is simply the exclamatory expression, with some depth of feeling, "How queer they are!" The inflections transposed would express the more trivial meaning, "They are so queer' that I can not help laughing'."

LESSON XII.

THE FOOD OF PLANTS.

1. THE food of plants consists of air and water, an 1 of the various substances dissolved in or mixed with them. By their leaves and roots* plants absorb water, which is composed of the two gases oxygen and hydrogen. By the little breathing holes in their leaves they also take in air, which is composed principally of the two gases oxygen and nitrogen, and a small proportion of carbonic acid. By the varied union of two or more of these constituent1 gases nearly all the parts of the plant are formed, the solids as well as the liquids.

2. The elements, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, are used by the plant, in various proportions, to form woody tissue,2 sugar, starch, resin, oils, and acids. Nitrogen, another gas, is also required in small quantities for many vegetable products, especially those used in medicines, and it is found in the most nutritious articles of food. But, besides the above, which are called organic elements, some mineral, earthy, and other ingredients, called inorganic elements, are also used as food, or for some other purpose, by different plants, although in small quantities.†

5

3. In view of these mineral and earthy matters which most

*The new and very small fibrous roots called spongioles, and not the large and old roots, are what absorb moisture or food from the earth. Hence the importance, in transplanting shrubs and trees, of preserving with care these little rootlets.

† Such as potassium, silicon, calcium, phosphorus, iron, sodium, sulphur, iodine, and chlorine. Even copper is taken in by the roots of some plants. It is said to form eight parts in a million in coffee, and about four and a half parts in a million in wheat.

plants are found to contain, the eminent German chemist, Liebig, has classified cultivated vegetables, some as alkali plants, of which the potato is an example; some as lime plants, among which are peas; some as silex or sand plants, which include the grasses; and some as phosphorus plants, among which are our grains, wheat, rye, etc. The skin of the ratan palm abounds so much in silex, which the plant has absorbed dissolved in water, that it will strike fire with a piece of steel; the same substance exists in other kinds of wood, to which it gives a peculiarly gritty texture; and in a plant common in this country, the equisētum, or horse-tail, which is used for polishing wood, the whole surface seems to be composed of compact sandy particles.

4. Carbonic acid gas, which, as we have elsewhere seen, is very destructive of animal life, and is produced by the breathing of animals and the combustion or decay of vegetable matter, is the most essential1o of the substances upon which plants are fed. It is taken into the plant both by the leaves and by the roots. By some mysterious process, which we do not understand, it is there decomposed," and, while the carbon is retained to aid in forming the solid parts of the plant, the oxygen is returned to the atmosphere. Here, being breathed by animals, it again meets with its old friend carbon, unites with it, and carbonic acid is again sent forth from animal lungs to supply other vegetables with carbon.

5. Thus, day by day, the whole vegetable world is growing up before our eyes, forming one half of its solid bulk out of a portion of the same air that we breathe the carbon which it borrows from the atmosphere and from decaying vegetation-while nine tenths of the other half are common water.* Strange though it may seem to us, yet we know that the solid parts of our wooden dwellings, of our ships that sail on the ocean, of our sturdy forest oaks, are formed almost wholly of compressed12 and hardened air and water. And when the vegetation that robes the summer landscape with beauty falls asleep in the lap of autumn, and when these forests that surround us fall, and put on the change which

* A plant is said to retain about one third part of all the water that enters its system, and to change it into a solid form,