useful, and seemingly the most obvious, arts make their way among mankind.

Without placing too implicit faith on the account above given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in ROAST PIG.

NOTE.-Locke, John.-A distinguished philosopher. Born at Wrington, near Bristol, 1632; died, 1704. He is best

known now by his "Essay on the Human Understanding."

LIFE'S DECAY.-Shakspere.

This is the 73rd of Shakspere's sonnets.

THAT time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare, ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,-
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

LESSONS ON SPECIFIC SUBJECTS.

BOTANY.

1. All plants are divided into two great classes or series. I. The FLOWERING PLANTS. II. The FLOWERLESS PLANTS.

*

2. FLOWERLESS PLANTS do not bear real flowers, having Stamens and Pistils, nor produce real seeds, or bodies having an embryo † ready formed in them. But they produce minute and very simple bodies which answer the purpose of seeds, and these are called spores, to distinguish them from true seeds. FERNS, MOSSES, and Liverworts, lichens, sea-weeds, and the mushroom family belong to this great class.

3. The FLOWERING PLANTS are divided into two great classes distinguishable by the stem, the leaves, the flower, and the embryo, or germ of the seed.

The first class is the Exogens, or Dicotyledons.§ The second class contains the Endogens.‡

1. THE FLOWERLESS PLANTS.

1. The simplest forms of vegetation, which consist of a union of single cells, have been described and illustrated in the "Fifth Reader," p. 234, to which I refer you.

Most of the thread-like green vegetation you see in pools and brooks belongs to the humble plants which consist of a single row of cells. The Moulds or Mildew Fungi which grow on decaying organic matter, -such as bread-mould, or cheese-mould, or feed on the juices of living plants and even of animals, also belong to this class. The potato disease is probably caused by a species of Mould; another kind is very fatal to silkworms, and a third parasitical Fungus has been the cause of the disastrous grape disease which has destroyed a great part of the vintage through Europe of late years. These plants consist of long and branching threads which penetrate and spread widely and rapidly through the vegetable or other body on which they live, and feed upon its juices. At length they break out upon the surface. and produce

*See "Fourth Reader," pp. 198, 199.

+ See "Fourth Reader," p. 200.

+ See "Fifth Reader," p. 241.

See "Fourth Reader," p. 200.

countless numbers of spores, or minute rudimentary cells, which are detached from the parent plant and serve the purpose of seeds.

2. When the cells multiply by forming partitions in two directions instead of only in one, we have a higher grade of vegetable life-the PLANTS OF A SINGLE LAYER OF CELLS. Some simple leaf-like sea-weeds are examples of this form of plant growth. (Figs. 75, 76.)

When the whole body of such a plant is thus expanded, and leaf-like, it is called a FROND.

3. The next advance is when, instead of a single layer of cells, spreading out into a plant, we have PLANTS COMPOSED OF SEVERAL LAYERS OF CELLS, formed by the division of the cells, and their consequent multiplication, taking place in more than two directions. Sea-weeds, lichens, and other plants of the lowest order, forming in this way a tissue of cells, generally exhibit either leaf-like or stem-like shapes. (Fig. 77.)

But it is only when we come to the highest tribe of Liverworts, and to he true Mosses, that the familiar type of ordinary vegetation is realised,

in Plants with a stem, which shoot upwards from the soil, or whatever

they may grow from, or creep along it; and grow onward from the

point of the stem, having it clothed symmetrically with distinct leaves as it advances. (Figs. 78, 79, 80, 81.)

Fig. 79. Fringed Cup-moss (Cladonia Fimbriata).

4. All these lower vegetables, of whatever form, imbibe their food through any or every part of their surface, at least that of the freshly