door. Fortunately for him he was too excited to sleep, for in the still hours he suddenly became aware that the tester of the bed on which he was lying was slowly and silently descending to smother him. The feelings of the fly on the sundew must be somewhat similar to this. Equally slowly and silently the tentacles which cover the leaf fold themselves around him; and when they expand again there is nothing left of the fly but the wings and the skin, the rest having been assimilated by the leaf.

Another carnivorous plant is the bladderwort (Utricularia). It is an aquatic plant, wholly submerged with the exception of the blossom, and profusely furnished with small bladder-like appendages about the size of snipe-shot. The bladders are open, and the opening is fringed with hairs pointing inwards like the wires of a rat-trap. The small animal organisms, whose number and variety in a single drop of water when examined under the microscope, astonish one, can enter, but they cannot leave it. There and then they turn into vegetable.

Once only (it was in the Dauphiné Alps) have I seen the beautiful yellow flower of the bladderwort rising from the water. Having made out what it was, I tried to bring some home in a bottle, but failed. The failure was of small importance, for having thus identified it, I found it growing in abundance about four miles from my own house. I transferred some to a pond in the garden, where it thrives amazingly, but I have never seen it in blossom in this country.

In England, Scotland and Ireland, our botanist, if he is fortunate, may find the curious subterranean parasite, Lathræa squamaria, whose English name of toothwort is derived from the ivory-white scales or leaves which cover the underground stem, and which are each a somewhat similar trap for

minute insects that make their way through the loosened earth. Thus in air, earth and water, vegetables have set their traps to turn the tables on the animal world, by catching and devouring many of its members.

We all know the evils of what is called "breeding in and in," and so do plants. To secure cross-fertilization their greatest ingenuity and most strenuous efforts are directed. I shall show presently how plants enlist the services of birds in the distribution of their seed, but for the purpose of crossfertilization their chief servitors are winged insects, especially bees and moths. It is to attract these that they surround their pollen-bearing stamens with petals of every hue, which add such a charm to life. It is as a bait for them that the drop of honey is distilled at the base of each flower. It is for the night-flying moths that certain flowers reserve their scent till the sun is down; and it may be noted that these are generally devoid of bright colors. Such would be useless to them in the dark, and they scorn waste.

It has been said that if there were no cats, there could be no clover. The connection is not, at first sight, obvious, but it is this; clover is wholly dependent for fertilization on the humblebee; field-mice are especially partial to bee-bread and the grub of the humble-bee; if it were not for the cats the field-mice would exterminate the bees, and the clover would perish. It is ingenious, but the author of it forgot the unjustly persecuted owl, who does more service to the farmer in keeping down the mice than all the pussy-cats in the place.

More pages than the editor would allow me would be needed to describe all the "dodges" (I can call them nothing else) that plants are up to to secure a cross-fertilization. I can but just mention a few. It is with this view that some plants are protogynous-that is

to say, it is not till the pistil has been fertilized by pollen from another plant that the stamens ripen their pollen, to be carried in turn to later flowers. A notable instance of this is the Aristolochia clematitis, a plant with an insignificant-looking tubular flower of about an inch long. At the bottom of the tube there is a globular chamber which contains the honey. The tube inside is covered with fine hairs, all pointing downwards. Thus small flies can enter, and, if they have previously been in other flowers, the pistil receives from them the pollen that is needed. Once in, the fly cannot escape at pleasure. He must stay there till the pistil is withered, and the stamens have, in their turn, ripened, and deposited their pollen in the chamber where the fly is. Then the imprisoning hairs wither up, probably the supply of honey ceases, and the fly, thoroughly coated with pollen, is free to depart. Liberty is sweet, but to his taste honey is sweeter still. He seeks another flower where the scent of honey is strong, and so the process is repeated till the supply of blossoms ceases.

In a previous number of this magazine, I have mentioned the sensitive nature of the stamens of the barberry, and how, when touched near the base by a honey-seeking insect, they spring forward, one by one, to cover him with their pollen, and so compel him to convey it to the next flower that he may visit. Another pretty experiment displays a mechanical arrangement with the same object. When at rest the stamens of the salvia with their anthers lie hidden within the hood, where they are protected from wet. If, however, our experimenting botanist will take a blunt-pointed pin, and holding it at about the length of a bee's trunk from the end, insert it in the tube, he will find that it there encounters the short arm of a lever, the long arm of which is the anther-bearing end of the stamen.

In its descent the pin (or trunk of the bee) pushes back this lever, thus causing the anthers to emerge from the hood, and gently to touch the finger of the operator, which represents the back of the bee, depositing its pollen there. On the pin being withdrawn, they retire again within the hood, to await another visit.

Though insects are the chief agents of cross-fertilization, they are far from being the only ones. There are many plants-such, for instance, as the grasses, and, among trees, coniferæwhose agent is the wind. They produce pollen in such abundance that a pistil can scarcely escape fertilization at the hands of the breeze. They do not need to attract the visits of insects, and consequently have neither honey, nor scent nor gorgeous flowers.

Some plants do not seem to be aware of the benefit to be drived from crossing, and have made all their arrangements for self-fertilization; while others are so resolved to discourage it that they will not admit the presence of the two sexes in the same flower; for instance, the hazel, the catkins of which contain stamens only, the female flowers being tiny red ones sessile on the twigs, that might easily escape attention. Others carry their table of affinity still further, enacting that no pistil shall be fertilized by pollen from the same tree. These have consequently male and female plants. An interesting example of this is the Aucuba Japonica. We have long had the female plant, which was easily propagated by cuttings, but bore no fruit. About a generation ago Japan was opened up, and some botanist brought home the male plant. Since then, our old friend, rejoicing in her recovered spouse, has brought forth abundantly, and, where he is near, is yearly covered with brilliant berries.

Not less notable are the habits of plants and their relations to animals in

the matter of the distribution of their seed. Some seeds, like those of the thistle, are furnished with a downy apparatus, which enables them to float upon the breeze. They can float thus for miles, seeking a new habitat. Others, like burs, are fur nished with hooks, by which they attach themselves to any passing animal, sticking to him perhaps for days, but sure, eventually, to be dropped somewhere away from the parent plant. Others, again, explode their seed vessel with sufficient force to scatter their seed far and wide. Children, grown-up ones sometimes, are fond of touching the ripening pods of balsam, and trying not to be startled by the explosion which ensues.

Of all the arrangements for dispersing seed, there is, however, none at all to compare with the compact which plants have apparently made with the animal kingdom, and especially with birds. It would almost seem as if there was a formal treaty between the two kingdoms, the vegetable saying to the other, "We will produce seed in abundance, far more in a single year than the whole world would suffice to grow, and this shall be to you for food, you rendering to us in return this service, that you deposit in a favorable position for growth, and uninjured, one grain in every ten thousand." Let us see how the animals fulfil their part of the compact. A man picks an apple, and munches it as he goes along, throwing the core away, the core in which are the seeds, which are thus deposited yards, or perhaps miles, away from the parent tree.

Why, on a winter's day, do we see the rooks and the sparrows contending which shall have the first turn-over of the freshly-deposited horse-droppings? Why, but because a few grains of oats often pass undigested through the horse? And perhaps an odd grain may escape even their sharp eyes and

germinate, thus covered and manured. Other small animals, like the field-mice, make their subterranean store, some of which through casualties in their small army, escape and grow.

The birds, however, are the principal agents in the distribution of seed. Let us glance at a few instances of this. The branches of an oak and the ground underneath may be seen in acorn time thick with rooks gorging themselves with acorns. But what is yon glossy purple fellow doing apart from the others. He has flown into the middle of the field, where he can have a better eye upon approaching enemies, and is vigorously hammering away at the ground with his strong beak. Having eaten as many acorns as his craw will hold, he is burying a few with an eye to hard times. When those times come the "boy with the gun" may have got him, or he may fail to locate some of his buried treasures, which grow up, and in time prove their gratitude by repaying the acorn with compound interest to his descendants.

The blackbird is especially fond of the berries of the ivy. When he has filled his craw with them, he retires to his favorite tree, and, putting his head under his wing, sleeps the sleep of the just. In the morning the ground under his perch is white with his droppings; but if these be examined, it will be found that the actual seeds have been too hard for his gizzard, and have been deposited in the very spot most favorable for their success in the battle of life at the foot of a tree. I must give one more example of this compact. In order that they may germinate, the seeds of the mistletoe must be smudged on to the branch of certain kinds of trees. With this view, the plant surrounds its seeds with a highly glutinous mucilage, which it flavors with a nicety to the taste of the thrush. In eating the berries the thrush can no more escape getting his beak covered outside

with this sticky mucilage than a child can indulge in a feast of bilberries with a clean mouth. His dinner ended, he goes, like a tidy child, to wipe his mouth; for this he finds the branch of a tree quite the handiest sort of napkin, but it is not the mucilage alone that he wipes off; an occasional seed has also stuck outside, and this, too he deposits on the branch together with the mucilage needed for its adhesion there, in the only position and under the only conditions suited to its growth, and which could not otherwise be easily attained.

It was a purely utilitarian idea that first drew me to a superficial study of botany. As a boy I had read, as all boys do greedily, the story of a shipwreck. The crew had, of course, been cast upon an uninhabited shore, where no food offered but strange plants that might have death hidden in their leaves. Now, amongst the officers was one who had some knowledge of botany, enough, at least, to make him aware that no crucifer is poisonous to the human subject. To him, also, the plants themselves were strange, but he caused all that were gathered to be brought to him; the cruciferæ he put in the pot, and the rest he rejected; and so he kept his crew alive till help came. The cruciferæ are so named from their petals forming a cross; but let none be misled into supposing that all cross-petaled flowers are, therefore, innocuous. Some are highly poisonous. A true crucifer must not only have four petals, but it must also have four divisions of the calyx; the stamens must also be examined and prove to be six in number, of which four are long and two short.

Only doctors fully understand how much an experimental and scientific study of plant life has tended to alleviate the ills from which we suffer in our persons and our properties. It was not till the microscope had laid bare

the fact that the dread potato disease was simply a fungus, that the means of treating it, which have now reduced its ravages to a comparatively insignificant amount, were discovered. What do we not owe to quinine? But without a chemical and experimental study of plant life we should never have known that it was to be found in the bark of certain trees.

A study of the natural orders of plants may, at first sight, appear unattractive, but it is full of interesting facts; witness that about the extensive order of cruciferæ mentioned above. I hate Greek names and never use such if there is an English equivalent; but English or Greek, surely it is deeply interesting to learn that, as a rule, all monocotyledons are endogenous, while dicotyledons are exogenous, so that when the first tender seed-leaves of a tree appear above ground, the botanist can tell, within limits, of what nature its timber will be. Even to the uninitiated, such names as Coniferæ, Rosaceæ, Compositæ, Umbelliferæ, Liliaceæ, Gramineæ, or, amongst non-flowering plants, the Ferns, the Mosses, the Fungi, the Algae, and the Lichens, convey at once certain well-defined characteristics which are a help in the general arrangement of such knowledge as one may happen to acquire. I once asked the members of a Y.M.C.A. if they could name any non-flowering plant. There was but one response; it was from the curate "carrots"!! And yet the species of cryptogamous, or non-flowering plants, far exceed in number those that bear flowers.

If there is one class of scientists to whose studies botany would appear alien, it is the mathematicians-and yet at p. 396 of the first volume of Kerner will be found some very curious facts, too long to quote here, as to the mathematical distribution of leaves on the stem.

What, I may be asked, is the use of

learning all this? Well, if the querist of "use" to confines his definition money-grubbing, even then the answer may be found above; but, if that word includes the attainment of happiness, it is of the highest use. Few things can more add to the happiness of travel, or even of a saunter round one's own garden, or a walk through town or counLongman's Magazine.

try than some knowledge of the reason of things, some perception of how the great God has woven all His works together, making each dependent on the other, till the heart breaks out in its hallelujah, "O ye mountains and hills, O all ye green things upon the earth, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify him forever."

Thomas Cooke-Trench.

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Moira O'Neill.