But truce to science and to long names, for Christmas is coming on, and all we have now to do with leaves, and berries and fruits, is to deck the home and to spread the board in remembrance of the time and mission of Him

"That to the cottage as the crown

Brought tidings of salvation down."

What cheerfulness do the leaves and fruits of winter add to the Christmas decorations when festivities are abroad; and when more serious thoughts engage the mind, and the retrospect of the past year is undertaken, fain would we hope that the hours spent beneath the leaves of the summer trees, and in search for the summer flowers, will not be found amid the least profitable, nor be amid the least pleasantly remembered. "Consider the lilies of the field," were the words of Him whose birthtime we now celebrate: consider their "array," and their "glory," for truly

"There is a lesson in each flower,

A story in each stream and bower;
In every herb on which you tread
Are written words, which, rightly read,
Will lead you from earth's fragrant sod
To hope, to holiness, and God."*

If such be the uses to the mind and heart of the study of the wild flowers, which He who made, and bade us "consider" them, has scattered without stint, in their beauty and fragrance, "o'er hill and dale and desert sod," cease not to care for them; think not that the interest is exhausted in one short year or summer, for with each succeeding season it will revive, the old friends will be welcomed, and scarcely can you fail to make new ones; for even the quickest

*Davis.

botanical eye overlooks, at times, some plant or other -perhaps the very one sought after-which another Then, again, in every neigh

year it detects at once.

bourhood fresh plants will appear year by year, carried thither by some of the means proper of plant transport, or disclosed by some fresh-turned soil; it may be some new railway embankment introduces quite a novel society in the vegetable world of your district. Nay, even if you should find no new plant, you cannot in any ordinary leisure exhaust the study of those which deck even the most scantily furnished flora. Discard not the most humble weed, the most neglected flower, for it is a mine of beauty—

"I'll teach thee miracles! walk on this heath
And say to the neglected flower, 'Look up
And be thou beautiful!' if thou hast faith

It will obey thy word."

Ay, have faith that there exists not the work of God's hand without beauty; and truly, in confirmation, says another one of the sweetest of our poets,"There's beauty all around our paths,

If but our watchful eyes

Can trace it midst familiar things

And through their lowly guise."+

But why should we try to persuade? we know there is not one who has once imbibed the love of our wild flowers, and their gatherings, who will willingly drop the pursuit.

Wild Flowers, we have yet a few plants unnoticed, which cannot be classed amid the flowers, for blossoms they have none, yet are they amongst the most ornamental of our native plants. One more paper do we propose on the fern tribes ere we say adieu.

* Barrington.

+ Hemans.

THE FERN TRIBES OF PLANTS.

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

OUR Wild Flower papers hitherto have dealt with flowers only; that is, with such plants as display— whether in gay dresses or without them, it matters not the little organs, called stamens and pistils, all these being classed under the somewhat break-jaw name of Phænogamous plants, that is, plants provided with organs distinctly adapted to the formation of true seeds. In this class nearly all the higher forms of vegetable life are included; but there yet remains that large department of vegetable existence arranged under the head of Cryptogamia, which crowned as it were by the ferns of temperate climes, and by the fern trees of the tropics, descends to the utmost verge of vegetable life, till it is lost in plants of microscopic minuteness, consisting of little more than a simple cell or vesicle of vegetable matter. Do not fear,we are not going to plunge you into a maze of fungi, mosses and such-like; but, be assured, the few higher cryptogamia to which we guide your attention will well repay the trouble of their investigation.

Many of our readers must know the ferns, or brackens, at least the commoner species, all must remember their beautifully cut leaves and elegant forms, which graced the banks and woods and rocks