and joiners of the human body set vigorously to work, and carry the red blood wherever repair is needed. Like an active garrison in a besieged town, they renovate during the night whatever has been damaged during the day, and when morning returns, we wake fresh, strong, buoyant, ready to start again. Would that we were always proportionately thankful to Him who "giveth his beloved sleep," and who thus replaces us so beautifully on the threshold of existence! In plants there is no such expenditure of nervous energy. They have no nerves, to begin with. The activity of their life is not accompanied by wear and tear. It consists solely in growth, preparation of new material, and consolidation of that material into new branches, twigs, and leaves. Whatever appearance resembling sleep they may present, accordingly, after nightfall, is not of the nature of slumbering repose. It is a relaxed condition of the petals, dependent, in most cases, upon the removal of the stimulus of the light of the sun, whereby they are made to subserve most elegantly the high and beautiful purpose of protecting what is at once the most important portion of the flower, and its tenderest and most vulnerable part. The centre of the flower contains the apparatus which originates the seed; and in the inmost core lies concealed, like the infant in its ante-natal state, the rudimentary seed itself, almost invisible to the unassisted eye, and exquisitely sensitive to the slightest injury. It is to protect this that the beautiful arrangement of the so-called sleep of the flower is called into play. When the petals fold together, it is Nature, always loving and solicitous to befriend, drawing the silken curtains round the living cradle in which her helpless progeny lies forming; and as nothing so much assists the growth and development of this tiny rudiment of future tree or brilliant flower as warmth, directly the sun shines again, the curtains are withdrawn, and the centre of the flower is turned as directly as possible towards the life-giving orb. Flowers are made so beautiful as we find them, no doubt in a high degree for the delight of human eyes. Before the appearance of man upon this earth of ours, scarcely anything of the character of a flower had been ultimated into existence here. Geology makes this abundantly evident, together with the fact that flowering plants, properly so called, began to appear in plenty upon the earth's surface only when the golden period which we call the creation of man, was swiftly approaching. Human delight, however, is not their only intent. The happiness of mankind is enhanced, without question, by every circumstance in nature, either directly or indirectly; but a special intent in the beauty of flowers, as produced by their coloured and satiny petals, is that they shall act as so many concave mirrors, and reflecting surfaces, catching the sun's rays,

and concentrating and casting them deliciously upon the seed-making apparatus, just as white clouds beautifully fling light upon the earth that they themselves have first received from the common source, or as silken curtains to parlour-windows transmit, when the sun is shining, a lustre not their own to our tables and books, and even to our faces, and this whether the sun itself be actually in view or not.

And here it may be remarked that another use of the painted petals of flowers is to attract little flying creatures of good purpose, since, by the action of their tiny feet, and the play of their transparent wings, they help, although unconsciously, to dislodge the pollen or yellow dust contained in the threads of the flower, and cause it to fall upon the seed-cradle, and thus help forwards the production of the seed, which, unless it were fed by this yellow dust, would never come to maturity, but wither away while no larger than the point of a pin. How wonderful are the expedients made use of in so simple a thing as a flower! A flower has as many friends as a human creature. The sun, the fresh air, the dew, the nourishing earth, the rain, even the cold of winter, alike lend their aid. Bees, butterflies, a score of almost invisible pairs of wings, visit it in turn, all doing their own peculiar good service. And, as if gifted with instinct, we find in this beautiful phenomenon of the shutting up in time of cold, the strong part protecting the weak, the large part shielding the little.

Many flowers close their petals at nearly definite periods of the day, and others open them at particular times of the morning; and there are many that appear to act independently of the stimulus of light, since they do not expand for several hours after the sun has risen. Perhaps they require the atmosphere to be well aired. There are many more, indeed, that open in the night-time,-beautifully in analogy with the birds that are nearly silent during the day, and only open their sweet throats for carols in the darkness. These have their counterparts also in moths and other insects that only fly by night, so that there is nothing anomalous or unnatural in it. It cannot, indeed, be unnatural, for their behaviour is quite as much a part of the custom and method of nature as that of the flowers that expand with the song of the lark, or that of the birds that chant over the "morning-glories,"* or that of the butterflies that flirt their deep-dyed wings on the bosom of the rose. So exact are the times of opening and closing, that a "floral clock" may be contrived by any one who will take the trouble to collect

* "Morning-glories" are the flowers of the different kinds of convolvulus, all of which open at day-break, and are remarkable for the splendour and the purity of their colours.

together in a garden specimens of such flowers as are suitable, and plant them in lineal or circular order. Linnæus contrived such a flower-clock in his garden at Upsala, and others have been made in our own country. Of course the difference of latitude, the change of the aspect, and other circumstances, cause slight differences in the time of opening, so that no list of times drawn up in one country will exactly correspond with that of another. But they always preserve the same relation;—a particular flower is always an hour earlier or an hour later than another flower; so that when once the period that either of them opens has been ascertained, that of the others can readily be calculated. It is much the same as with the positions of the stars, and their relations to particular hours of the night, according as the seasons change. Though Arcturus, and Orion, and the Pleiades, shedding sweet influence," are not always to be found in the same part of the sky, yet we always know, when we spy either one of them, where to look for the others. The three great stars that form the slantwise belt of Orion, always point, in a direct line upwards, to the Pleiades; and the same three splendid diamonds always point, in a direct line downwards, to Sirius, the most brilliant of the fixed stars, and one of the nearest to the earth. Sirius and the Pleiades are just about equidistant from Orion's belt, so that there never need be any difficulty in determining them.

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There is one large class of plants, constituting the Pea-family, in which the sleep of the flowers is often accompanied by a corresponding condition of the leaves. Of course this latter is in no way subservient to the protection of the reproductive apparatus, except in a few instances, where we find the leaves that are nearest to the blossom folding together in such a way as to become a cloak for it. But this is very rare. We may observe it in the four-podded lotus, and it is said to be very prettily shewn in the tamarind-tree; and travellers in foreign countries who are quick to notice such things, have probably detected other examples. The sleep of the leaves is a simultaneous but an independent phenomenon, and its object is more like that of animal sleep, namely, to give to the vitality of the plant a respite from the employment to which it is devoted during the day, and allow of a quiet progress of its internal or domestic economy. During the day, the leaves of plants are held in a constrained position by the force of the sunlight, which draws them towards itself with as great force as a magnet draws a piece of steel, and all this time they are diligently engaged in the preparation of new vegetable substance out of the carbonic acid, the water, and other available materials contained in the atmosphere. All this time the leaves

are like so many industrious men and women, whom the morning calls away from their pillows, and compels by its inspirations to renew their daily duties. Their allegiance to the sun is precisely similar, and when, at the close of the day, the great ruler alike of leaves and men retires, and the constraint is removed, on the one hand we see the work-room and the counting-house exchanged for the arm-chair or the fireside; on the other we see the foliage that just now was spread so vividly, droop with rich and elegant languor, and lie like the ringlets on the neck of a child that has fallen asleep in the midst of its play.

Nothing is more beautiful to contemplate than the parallel between the life of leaves and that of man. Infancy in the one is the early spring condition of the other. Each has its summer of maturity, and each has its autumn of decline; while every separate day and night is with each an alternation of activity and rest. Leaves do nothing during the night,—that is to say, nothing of the nature of work for the benefit of the plant as a whole; their activity ceases when darkness comes; they never fail, however, to resume it in the morning. Everything that a plant contains is prepared in the leaves. The roots absorb plenty of crude nourishment, but it is in the leaves that this is converted into genuine plant food; so that we may well compare them to the busy labourers who maintain the fabric and the comfort of society,-men in the town, women in the sanctuaries of home,-every one of whom who fulfils the duties of life is a leaf of the great tree of the human family. Well, too, may we expect that in the evening they should shew signs of weariness, and repose themselves each in its own fashion. Man comes home to the prattle of his little folk, their tales of the day's wonders, told half out-of-breath, and with sweet dance of innocent eyes to the music of mingled voices; or he comes to his new found wife, happy in her little pride, that lives not so much upon her knees as in the innermost centre of her heart, and lifts up heaven into her face in small, sweet babe-smiles that float like speech from lips yet speechless, but to call her some day by the sweetest name a woman can hear ;-home he comes to these, finding that the Golden Age is not a dream of ancient poets, but a golden thread that runs through all the years and centuries, and of which he holds a filament; and over them he closes like the lotus and the tamarind.

True, it is not always so, as we may learn again from other leaves that, wind-wrung and dusty, seem placed in nature only that they may supply contrasts. But, when realised, how beautiful those evening hours! Feeling and affection fill them with all forms of human delight. Is it surprising, then, is it anything but most natural, that among the

changes of the green leaves, which are their images in the world of plants, we should find the most exquisite diversities? The leaves of the lupine fold into the shape of a lady's half opened parasol; those of the woodsorrel dispose themselves into the form of a triangular pyramid; those of the white clover make a letter T; those of the vetch kind, which grow in opposite pairs, rise up face to face, like two hands with the palms pressed together.

We need not go into Botanic Gardens to see these things. They lie at our feet, everywhere in the fields and woods; just as we need not go into the ranks of the rich and great to see conjugal and domestic happiness, since it is a gift equally to the poor and humble. A walk in the country never need be without enjoyment. Everywhere we have pretty spectacles of life in action, and like our own. And indeed it often seems as if the most wonderful illustrations were the minutest. Somehow or other, large things always seem to take care of themselves. Their bigness is a safeguard. We admire them for their grandeur, but it is hardly possible perhaps to love them so much as we love what is little; and something of the same principle seems illustrated in the ways of the Creator, the little is always an object of consummate protection.

Lastly, as regards the sleep of flowers, it is to be observed that those in which the corolla appears to consist of only one petal, as in the foxglove, do not exhibit this beautiful phenomenon. The structure of the blossom precludes the possibility of it. Here we generally see the nocturnal protection of the stamens and pistil provided for by the peculiar shape of the corolla, and by its position. This kind of corolla is generally cave-like, or the upper part of it is in the shape of a great hood, which shoots off the rain as it falls. Very frequently this kind of corolla is pendulous, so that in its drooping position it provides a natural self-defence for the tender parts within. Whether we can discern it or not, we may be sure that there is adequate and beautiful protection of some kind. When we think Nature has forgotten or is partial, it is that our own eyes are dim. Moreover, there are in all likelihood many arrangements in nature which it is scarcely possible for eyes to make out, but which a reverent intelligence may think of from analogy, and admire as greatly as if they were visible. We do not " see" how the myriads of tiny insects find their food; but that they are all endued at once with good appetites, the satisfaction of which is a delight to them, and with abundance of good nutriment, we may be sure.