only discovered by their long shining styles which hang from the ears in tufts like silken tassels. One peculiarity noticed in nearly all the members of the Grass family is the exceeding hardness of the outer covering of their stems, which is caused by a thin coating of flinty or silicious matter. The sharp edge of a blade of grass has often cut the flesh of curious or careless boys in the experiment of drawing it through their fingers.

11. Numerous and abundant, throughout all literature, are the tributes of praise with which poetry has striven to enshrine in our affections the valuable cereals we cultivate. The ancients, in their mythology, placed agriculture above all other pursuits, and called CERES, who was the fabled goddess of grain and harvests, the Great Goddess, and the Mighty Mother. Songs and festivals celebrated her benevolent gifts to man; and when we come down to later ages, we find that songs to the "Harvest Moon," and songs of "Harvest Home," have ever been the most popular of national melodies.

12.

Pleasing 'tis, O harvest-moon!
Now the night is at her noon,
'Neath thy sway to musing lie,
While around the zephyrs sigh,

Fanning soft the sun-tanned wheat,

Ripened by the summer's heat;
Picturing all the rustic's joy

When boundless plenty greets his eye,
And thinking soon,

O harvest-moon!

The last dear load of harvest-home.-HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

As a suitable closing of this lesson we must extend it still farther, and give place to the following, which is both appropriate to the subject, and to be admired for the associations which it recalls.

13.

14.

15.

CORN-FIELDS.

(Corn is a term applied in Europe to all the cereals.)

When on the breath of autumn-breeze,
From pastures dry and brown,
Goes floating like an idle thought
The fair white thistle-down,
Oh then what joy to walk at will
Upon the golden harvest hill !
What joy in dreamy ease to lie
Amid a field new shorn,
And see all round, on sunlit slopes,
The piled-up stacks of corn;
And send the fancy wandering o'er
All pleasant harvest-fields of yore.
I feel the day-I see the field,

The quivering of the leaves,
And good old Jacob and his house
Binding the yellow sheaves;
And at this very hour I seem
To be with Joseph in his dream.

16.

17.

18.

I see the fields of Bethlehem,

And reapers many a one,
Bending unto their sickle's stroke-
And Boaz looking on;

And Ruth, the Moabite so fair,
Among the gleaners stooping there.
The sun-bathed quiet of the hills,
The fields of Galilee,

That eighteen hundred years ago
Were full of corn, I see;

And the dear Savior takes his way
'Mid ripe ears on the Sabbath-day.
Oh golden fields of bending corn,
How beautiful they seem!

The reaper-folk, the piled-up sheaves,

To me are like a dream.

The sunshine and the very air

Seem of old time, and take me there.-MARY HOWITT.

1 GLU-MA'-CEOUS plants are those which have glumes, like the husk or chaff of the grains and grasses.

LESSON XXI.—OF THE HIDDEN USES OF PLANTS.
THERE be in plants

Influences yet unthought, and virtues, and many inventions,

And uses above and around, which man hath not yet regarded.

Not long, to charm away disease, hath the crocus yielded up its bulb, Nor the willow lent its bark, nor the nightshade its vanquished poison; Not long hath the twisted leaf, the fragrant gift of China,

Nor that nutritious root, the boon of far Peru,

Nor the many-colored dahlia, nor the gorgeous flaunting cactus,

Nor the multitude of fruits and flowers ministered to life and luxury:
Even so, there be virtues yet unknown in the wasted foliage of the elm,
In the sun-dried harebell of the downs, and the hyacinth drinking in the
meadow,

In the sycamore's winged fruit, and the facet-cut cones of the cedar;
And the pansy and bright geranium live not alone for beauty,
Nor the waxen flower of the arbute, though it dieth in a day,
Nor the sculptured crest of the fir, unseen but by the stars;
And the meanest weed of the garden serveth unto many uses,

The salt tamarisk, and juicy flag, the freckled orchis, and the daisy.

The world may laugh at famine when forest trees yield bread,
When acorns give out fragrant drink, and the sap of the linden is as fatness:
For every green herb, from the lotus to the darnel,

Is rich with delicate aids to help incurious man.-M. F. TUPPER.

There is perhaps no pursuit which leads the mind more directly to an appreciation of that wisdom and goodness which pervade creation, than the study of the vegetable kingdom, in which infinite variety, beauty, and ele gance, singularity of structure, the nicest adaptations, and the most preeminent utility, meet us at every step, and compel us to observe and learn, even when often the least disposed to inquiry or reflection.-CHAMBERS.

THIRD DIVISION.

CRYPTOGAMOUS PLANTS.

[Cryp-tog'-a-mous, or Flowerless Plants, are divided into two classes, Ac'-ro-gens and Thal'-lo-gens; the leading physiological peculiarities of which are,

1st. The stem of an Acrogens grows from the end, but does not increase in diameter. Acrogens have breathing pores, or stomata, in their skin or covering; their leaves and stem are distinctly separated; they produce no flowers, but multiply by reproductive spheroids or spores, somewhat analogous to seeds, but whose nature is not well known.

2d. Thallogens are mere masses of cells; they have no stomata or breathing pores, foliage, or flowers; and they multiply by the spontaneous formation in their interior, or upon their surface, of reproductive spheroids called spores.]

LES. XXII.—FERNS, LIVERWORTS, AND MOSSES. (ACROGENS.)

1. Polypo'dium vulga're, Common polyp'ody, or Wall fern, xxi. 1, brown, 1 f., My.-O. 2. Struthiop'teris Pennsylva'nica, Ostrich fern, xxi. 1, br., 2 f., Au. 3. Pte'ris atropurpu'rea, Rock brake, xxi. 1, br., 10 in., Au.-S. 4. Aspid'ium Thelyp'teris, Lady fern, xxi. 1, 1 f., br., Jl.-Au. 5. Marchan'tia polymor'pha, Variable liverwort, xxi. 6, dark green, 2 in., moist rocks, winter. 6. Autho'ceros puncta'ta, Dotted liverwort, xxi. 6, spring, dark green, 1 in., damp places. 7. Sphag'num obtusifolium, Peat moss, xxi. 5, y. and g., bogs, 7 in. 8. Gymnos'tomum viridis'simum, Green moss, xxi. 5, bright green, trees and rocks, 1 in. 9. Grim'mia apocar'pa, Alpine moss, xxi. 5, dark olive, 1 in., dense tufts on rocks and trees. 10. Ortho' trichum cris'pum, Crisp moss, xxi. 5, bright green, 1 in., trees. 11. Grim'mia pulvina'ta, Cushion moss, xxi. 5, bright green, in., house-tops. 12. Bartra'mia Halleria'na, Mountain moss, xxi. 5, bright green, 6 in., mountains. 13. Hyp'num mura'le, Wall moss, xxi. 5, light green, 1 in., walls and stones.

1. WE come now to a very singular division of the vegetable world, embracing a vast multitude of plants which dif fer from those before described in having no flowers for the production of seed and fruit. They indeed bear no true seeds, but are propagated by innumerable small germs called spores,

ready to grow where they find a proper home, which is sometimes a piece of bread, or cheese, or decaying wood. Among these plants the highest in order are the ferns, which are more like flowering plants than any other family of the cryptogamia; yet even in them no true flower is ever seen; and what are sometimes called their seeds, and which are so minute as to present to the eye only an impalpable1 powder, are found gathered in brown spots or lines on the under surface of the fronds or leafy portions of the mature plant.

"'Tis there the fern displays its fluted wreath,

Beaded beneath with drops of richest brown."

2. Ferns thrive best in damp places, though they sometimes grow in pastures and on dry hill-sides. Thus it has been said of one of the beautiful plants of this family:

"Where the copsewood is the greenest,
Where the fountain glistens sheenest,2
Where the morning dew lies longest,
There the Lady Fern grows strongest."

The ferns growing in the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia are more than four feet in height; and in tropical countries the tree fern rises to the height of thirty or forty feet. One of the most interesting peculiarities of ferns is the spiral manner in which the leaflets are coiled up before their first appearance, each one being rolled in toward the rib that supports it a peculiarity which has been very prettily noticed in the following lines:

6. It having been ascertained that ferns were propagated by seeds, although the flower, if there were any, was too minute to be detected even by the most powerful microscope, there was a mystery thrown over the plant, which naturally gave rise to many poetic fancies, one of which was the power of rendering invisible the person who was so fortunate as to possess the seed; and to this fancied property we find an allusion in Shakspeare:

"We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible."

7. Scarcely any flowering plants have been greater favorites

with all classes of persons than ferns; nor is this to be wondered at when we consider both their intrinsic beauty, and their association with all that is wild and romantic in scenery, where mountain and valley, rocks and shaded fountains, combine their fascinating influence upon the imagination. Their embellishment of rugged and wild mountain scenery has been embalmed in the poetry of Scott. He sometimes prefers the Caledonian name of brake or bracken to that of fern. In picturing to the eye the sudden rise and disappearance of the soldiers of Roderick Dhu, when he gave the signal" whistle shrill, and was answered from the hill," we see heath,.broom, and bracken forming the ambuscade.

8.

"Instant, through copse and heath, arose
Bonnets, and spears, and bended bows;
On right, on left, above, below,

Sprung up, at once, the lurking foe;
From shingles gray their lances start,

The bracken bush sends forth the dart,
And every tuft of broom gives life

To plaided warrior armed for strife,
As if the yawning hill to heaven

A subterranean host had given."

9. And when, after a suitable pause, the chieftain

"Waved his hand,

Down sunk the disappearing band;

Each warrior vanished where he stood,
In broom or bracken, heath or wood;
It seemed as if their mother earth
Had swallowed up her warlike birth.
The wind's last breath had tossed in air
Pennon, and plaid, and plumage fair-

The next but swept a lone hill-side,

Where heath and fern were waving wide;

The sun's last glance was glinted3 back

From spear and glaive, from targe5 and jack,6
The next, all unreflected, shone

On bracken green and cold gray stone."

10. There is an interesting family of plants, called Liverworts, belonging to the same class as the ferns, and in many respects resembling the mosses. Their leafy expansions are soft and green; they are usually found growing on moist surfaces, often where there is little or no soil, and are very common in the chinks between paving-stones in unfrequented places, and on the surface of the earth contained in gardenpots, as also upon walls which from any cause are kept constantly damp. Besides the seeds which grow on the leaf, as in ferns, some of the liverworts have little stalks growing from them, and bearing on their summit flower-like appendages which contain minute bodies that seem to have the power of spontaneously detaching themselves from their birthplace. When thrown into the water they move about rapidly like animalculæ.