THE FADED HEATHER.

It is recorded of the Highland emigrants to Canada, that they wept because the heather would not grow in their newly adopted soil.

There may be some too brave to weep
O'er poverty, or care, or wrong,
Within whose manly bosoms sleep

Emotions gentle, warm, and strong;
Which wait the wakening of a tone,
Unmarked, unthought of by the crowd,

And seeming, unto them alone,

A voice both eloquent and loud;
And then the feelings hid for years,
Burst forth at length in burning tears.

He wept, that hardy mountaineer,

When faded thus his loved heath-flower;

Yet 'mid the ills of life, no tear

Had wet his cheek until that hour;
You might have deemed the mountain tree
Had sooner shrunk before the blast,

Or that his native rock should be

Rent by the winds which hurried past,
Rather than he a tear should shed,
Because a wild-flower drooped its head.

It would not grow-the heather flower,
Far from its native land exiled,
Though breezes from the forest bower
Greeted the lonely mountain child;
It better loved the bleak wild wind

Which blew upon the Highland hill,
And for the rocky heath it pined,
Though tended both with care and skill;
An exile on a stranger strand,
It languished for its native land.

O! if the heather had but grown
And bloomed upon a foreign scene,
Its owner had not felt alone,

Though a sad exile he had been;
But when he marked its early death,

He thought that like his mountain flower,

Withered beneath a foreign breath,

He soon might meet his final hour, And die, a stranger and alone, Unwept, unpitied, and unknown.

A. P.

CHAPTER XXII.

OF

ALOE-AGAVE-HEDGES FORMED OF THIS PLANT-USES OF AGAVE BRIDGES MADE OF AGAVE FIBRE-USE AGAVE IN MANUFACTURE OF PAPER-ANCIENT MEXICAN MANUSCRIPT-PULQUE MADE FROM THE AGAVE-ALOE -USE OF THE ALOE PLANT BY MAHOMETANS-ALOE PLANTED ON GRAVES ADAPTATION OF SUCCULENT PLANTS TO SPOTS ON WHICH THEY GROW-CACTUSNUTRITION OF PLANTS.

"But high in amphitheatre above,

His arms the everlasting aloe threw."

Campbell.

UNDER the general name of aloe are comprehended two distinct families of plants, the agave and the aloe. From the latter, the drug so often employed in medicine, is obtained.

It was to a plant properly called agave, though usually termed aloe (the Agáve Americana) that our forefathers attributed the remark

able faculty of flowering once in a hundred years. This was for many years commonly asserted, but that great teacher-Time, has proved the assertion fabulous; and this may now be added to the list of popular errors, which the knowledge of later years has shown to be a long catalogue. The fact is, that this is a plant of remarkably slow growth, and as ours is not its native climate, it attains with us its usual size and maturity much more gradually than in its congenial clime. As it is very commonly planted in flower-pots, this slow growth is often seen; for, even when in a flourishing condition, the agave or aloe only lengthens its prickly leaf by slow degrees, and seldom grows an inch in a year. When, however, it has reached its ordinary size, it produces flowers, and this may be once in seventy, eighty, or a hundred years, as the degree of culture, and measure of heat afforded, may affect it. Several plants of the American agave, have blossomed in England during the last few years; but, as from their nature, the flowers cannot be frequent, public

attention is sometimes invited to the circumstance when it occurs. The leaves are full of pulpy matter, very spiny, and often six feet long. In some varieties they are striped with yellow, white, or red. The flowers, which are of a greenish yellow colour, continue in bloom three months, and crown a stem which rises thirty feet in height. The agave, owing to this lofty stem, presents one of the most gigantic specimens of plants which, in familiar language, we term flowers, in distinction from shrubs and trees. Our forefathers named this plant the sea-ayegreene, because of the evergreen nature of its leaves.

There are many species of agave in British gardens and hothouses. They are, however, very similar to each other in general appearance, and it is thought that travellers who describe them very often confound one with another.

One kind of agave (Agáve foétida) exhibits a striking rapidity of growth. M. A. Richard says of it, "this plant, which I have seen