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THE series of lectures in the "Michaux " Course, at

Horticultural Hall, in Fairmount Park, (Philadelphia), has been delivered as usual, this fall, by Prof. J. T. Rothrock, of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the most accomplished of American botanists, and a very interesting lecturer. On Tenth month 10th, his topic was "Peculiar Woods." He said that woods might become peculiar and show marked deviations from ordinary wood in two ways: First, by peculiar coloration, and second, by peculiar structure.

To one raised in the North Temperate Zone the term wood conveys almost of necessity the idea that only the product of an exogenous stem can be intended. We have no endogens which produce what we here could call wood. The palmetto is firm enough to do duty in building forts or wharves, but still its spongy texture precludes our thinking of it as a wood. Hence it is understood we include here only such timber as comes from an exogenous tree or shrub, though the most peculiar of those alluded to come from tropical or sub-tropical regions.

It will be requisite first to describe what might be normal wood, i. e., normal in color and in structure; and under head of structure we may include specific gravity when greater than that of water.

Considering this last feature first, as being not only the most peculiar but also the one capable of being the most briefly stated: There are in the United States sixteen species of trees or shrubs which are heavier than water, and hence, which will sink in it. These all come from the warmer part of our domain; some from the excessively dry regions of Arizona or New Mexico, and others from along the moist shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Thus the black iron-wood of Florida is almost five times as heavy as the "big tree" wood from California bulk for bulk.

The peculiarities of coloration are often very marked. The typical exogen should have a darker interior of harder heart wood, which is always dead, and often in incipient decay, along with an outer portion which is usually lighter, softer and still partly living. This coloration is generally quite symmetrical when seen on cross sections of a mature stem, and that of the heart wood is usually due to infiltrated substances, which are mostly combustible organic compounds," and very often capable of being used as dyes. Among the common deviations in color which may be observed is that furnished by the so-called letter wood (Brosimum Aubletti.) This is a member of the bread fruit family of plants, comes from tropical America, including Trinidad, and is valued for making canes and cabinet-ware on account of its very peculiar markings.

Woods peculiar in structure are many, and the deviations from type which they show are numerous. The ordinary exogen shows, first, in the interior, more or less of a pith cavity; then outside of this, for each year, a ring of wood (as a rule). Cutting these rings at right angles, one finds the medullary rays extending from the pith or centre out to where bark and wood join on the circumference. At this point, interposed between bark and wood, the creative tissue called cambium is found. This layer, from its inside, forms wood and from its outside bark. Year by year it recedes farther and farther from the centre and leaves in its wake a wider belt of wood. Throughout the life of the plant this one outward moving belt of living tissue does its work until it builds up the completed organism. But there are certain groups of plants in which there is a wide departure from this method.

In the family which has the long botanical name of Menispermacea, and which is most common in the tropics, there are plants which have formed repeated cambium zones. In such we see apparently that each zone has an individuality of its own; that it appears at first sight to bear no other relation than that one is outside of and wholly or partly encloses the other. The medullary rays instead of reaching from the pith to the bark, merely extend out until a new layer starts, and this begins and completes its own rays. The wood known to druggists as pareira brava is such an example. This very striking peculiarity is produced by the bark, outside of the cambium, developing a few generated cells at several points in the bark of the previous growth. These new points extend laterally until they have formed a new belt of cambium clear around the stem. It begins to grow outwardly until it has formed a layer of bark and wood quite as conspicuous as the first was. It does not follow that the first one which it encloses ceases to grow. Indeed, some appearances indicate to the contrary. It would also appear as though there might be several such rings growing at the same time, the outer ones being successively smaller until they are reduced to mere lines. Neither does it follow that these rings so formed shall be at all comparable to the year rings in say one of our oak trees.

Related to this form of pareira brava is another unknown plant, the once so-called white pareira brava (Abuta nefesceus) in which the new growth instead of surrounding the stem. are only produced on the one side, and each new crescent of growth appears to dip down into and end on the edge of the one developed inside of it. This gives the stem a flat appearance and in extreme cases might produce a board-like stem. Under lateral pressure our wistaria occasionally produces a like anomalous series of growths.

The next anomalous peculiar woody growth is when, as in the trumpet vine family, a transverse section of the stem would show that the wood was in the form of a cross, though the entire outline of the bark and wood combined might be round or square. The cross vine of the Southern United States is a fine illustration of this, though a still more striking example was furnished a few years ago in the wood of

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a related plant which came to this city from Tropical America. In that the cross was so plain that at once a suspicion would arise as to whether it was not an artificial production. It was genuine, and was produced in this way:

At first the growth was normal; soon, however, at four points outside the cambium a zone of fibrous bundles appeared. At these points the growth of the wood outward is retarded; but between them it pushes outward as usual. Speedily the normal woody growth assumes the form of a Maltese cross, while the vacant spaces between the arms are filled up by bark and fiber, so that the round or square character of the stem is still preserved; it nevertheless is plainly differentiated by bark and wood into a cross. The shape is perfect, and operating upon the superstition and the reverential feelings of the natives of Tropical America, the plant which bears it has become almost a sacred thing to them.

From the Christian Register. THE" COUNTRY WEEK" WORK IN LONDON.

THE Children's Holiday Fund for Marylebone has

been at work for two years. The work is carried on from year to year consecutively. and is now in thoroughly efficient order. It is not giving only one day at a time in the country to children who go out in the morning in crowded vans and return worn out in the evening, it is a three weeks' country holiday. In the first year, the committee (most of whom are managers of board schools) sent away for three weeks into the country one hundred and eighty-seven children for £176 14s. In the second year (1884), they sent away three hundred and twenty-seven children for the same period, at a cost of less than a pound for each child. They traveled and were boarded for this money at Holmwood, Loughton, Colnbrook, Chelmsford, Swindon, Ashford, Battle, and many other places in the heart of the country; and not a single accident occurred, and only one case of illness. They are taken in by small cottagers and farmers, whose houses are carefully selected for them by the clergymen and chief residents of the place, who visit them once or twice a week during their stay, and have them up to tea and games at the rectory or the country house. They play in the open fields, by the banks of streams, in the shady lanes, and among the heathery hills. All the farm life enchants them. They help in the orchard and the garden, in the barn and the dairy, and among the animals; and everything is to them a wonder and happiness.

Those who are sickly and overworn, or those who know nothing of the country, are chiefly chosen by the committee from the schools; and the masters and the mistresses give most efficient help. After the selection, the parents are all visited, and are eager, when they can, to subscribe even a small sum, a shilling, or a sixpence, to their children's joy; and in this way, £14 was last year contributed to the fundthat is, the poor people themselves sent away fourteen children to the country. It is good for them to do this, and it gives them a healthy pleasure to hear that they have given their share.

The mothers take pains to send their little ones away clean and decently clothed, and this is one of the points most insisted on by the committee; but it needs little insistence. The doctor's examination then takes place, and to examine three hundred children under the rigid eye of the managers is no light task. Some of the strangest and most affecting scenes have taken place during the examination, when poor little things suffering from some infectious disease have been sent back, weeping their hearts away for sorrow at the loss of so much joy. When this is over, they are all packed off to their several destinations from different stations in London; and it is a delightful scene to watch and share in. For their joy is infectious; and their excitement, deepening as the departure of the train draws near, animates the whole station.

Their journey brings forth all the tenderness of grown-up men and women. Casual passengers, fine ladies, important gentlemen, offer to look after them; and the roughest fellows are touched by the pleasure of the weary little things. "They, too, are no mean preachers;" and the unconscious lessons they teach of compassion, gentleness, tenderness, and of the blessing of joy, are one of the great goods of this form of human charity.

For three weeks, then, and at a cost of five shillings a week, or six where milk is scarce and the country folk have to keep back some of the milk they send to London, the children receive the fearless visitings" of nature, or those that come with soft alarm troubling their unconscious hearts with undetermined thought-shocks of mild surprise that kindle love and imagination. God grows to them a greater and dearer reality. He speaks to them in a new tongue; and, though they do not understand him more, they feel that there is Love in the world, for they feel his beauty. The flowers, they say so much and so silently, reveal to them loveliness; the blue depths of the sky awaken wonder in their souls, -that wonder in which so much of joy is hidden; the music of the running waters and the wind in the woodland stir in them the spirit of an unknown life; all nature provokes that eagerness of infantine desire which almost sleeps in the gloom of London, and which is the loveliest thing in childhood-loveliest to us, at least, whom life has too much worn, and who would give half our knowledge to regain its wisdom,

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In youth; but, oh, what happiness to live,
When every hour brings palpable access

Of knowledge, when all knowledge is delight,
And sorrow is not there!"

It is this teaching, these things that sink down in the heart and hold it like a dream, that I ask you to give to the children,—this education that they can not get in London; worth as much at least to them as that which they gain at school; worth more for that higher part of their nature which feels, imagines, and is drawn to God through beauty, quiet, and through sweet content. For the influences they receive do not pass away; nor do they, while they last, beget discontent. They live on in the children's

hearts in London. The tiny travelers recall throughout the winter with happy or pensive pleasure all that they have seen. Better than pictures on the walls are the pictures they keep in their hearts, the tales of which they tell their parents, their comrades of the street, talking of flowers and farm life, and woods and waters, until the dusty court seems filled with the sweetness and the breadth of country air. They have clung for a time to the breast of Nature, and she has given them immortal food.

This is not a fancy picture. I have heard numbers of stories of all they have told of the hay-field and the cows and the games in the barn, of their delights in digging, in plucking actual fruit from the trees, of tending the flowers, of bathing in the stream, of the wonders of the clear sky, of the endless woods, of the early morning when they went out with the farmer, of the return in the evening laden with flowers. In sickness, when they are cold and starved in November days, in the thick gloom of London, they remember their happy hours. They look upon their summer dream, and their heart is in heaven. This is no rhetoric; it is drawn from life. They have gained an education: their imagination makes pictures, their heart is full of sweet and joyful thought; and the whole court and lane profit by it.

And what it is to these children, you who have pleasant homes can scarcely imagine. For I know the places, close to my house, from which many of them come,-garrets and cellars, and close rooms where three or four sleep in a single bed; where the night is loud with noise of drunken men, with the shouts of the hot court below where the rude play is kept up till three in the morning; where the air is thick with foul smells, and the water scarcely drinkable; where men and women sleep on the stairs for air; where half the sights they see are sin or crime; where they rise hungry and cold in the dawn of winter, and desire most the school where they are often happiest. This is what you do not know at your homes, where your children are sheltered from sin and sickness; and to set these orphans of joy free for a time, and give them a little pure air and light, ought to move you to the soul. Of all the things I have heard, the most affecting is the silent wonder, the clasped hands, the look of rapture, the hushing of all noise which is seen in the children who live in these miserable dwellings, as they leave the last houses of London behind them, and see the wide fields and the open sky. When a little boy was told he was to go, and heard what he would see, he said, "Is that the place, teacher, mother tells me of,-is it heaven?"

Nor is the good done confined to those who come from London. Like all things that are clearly right and human, those who help in this thing have their own gain. Country and town are linked together, and do good to one another. The phrases that have grown up among the children and among those who receive them, of "country fathers and mothers," of "town sons and daughters," speak volumes, and testify to the loving kindness of those who receive the boys and girls in their homes. Friendships spring up between the cottagers in the fields and the parents in the city. The children's hands unite them. When

the villagers come to London, they visit the parents of the little ones they have looked after, go with them to the parks, and have tea with them in their rooms. They sometimes send up during the year, flowers, fruit, or vegetables to their foster children; and always, when the children come home, they are laden with flowers by their country friends.

Then the farmers and the cottagers are delighted to hear of London life and all its strangeness from the children. They gain a new view of the world. It does them more good than any book to hear the stories, to taste in this living way of the excitement of the town. The cottage is enlivened, the whole hamlet, I have been told, is stirred by the wonders that they hear; and, in turn, it is an endless amusement to the villagers to watch the surprise, to hear the exclamations of joy that pour from the lips of the city children, when they see the common objects of field and farm. The country folk find out how wonderful, how beautiful, is the world in which they are living. The veil of custom falls away; and they learn to prize the things they have lived among all their life, and never known. The smartness, the keenness, of London children astonishes them; and, if the soul of the city visitors is awakened by their holiday, the intelligence of their country hosts is aroused. And this they have often confessed with pleasure. There grows up a real friendship between the children and their hosts, founded on good mutually received and given; and the friendship itself is full of loving memories. Both are frankly delighted when, the year after, they come together again.

THE INDIAN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION.-To secure the civilization of the 290,000 Indians of the United States, and to prepare the way for their absorption into the common life of our own people, is the object of the Indian Rights Association. It wishes to secure to them the protection of the law; education, both moral, intellectual and physical; and a protected individual title to land. So long as these are denied the Indian, he will remain in an uncivilized condition. During the past year, investigations have been made regarding the reported extreme destitution and starvation prevalent among many tribes of Montana Indians. The facts gathered, says Prof. Painter, are "sufficiently horrible to startle the conscience of the nation, and to arouse our people to take such action as shall prevent their recurrence in the future." He states upon the sworn testimony of two citizens that in the neighborhood of Fort Assiniboine the Indians only saved themselves from absolute starvation by the sacrifice of their wives, their daughters, and even their young female children, to the brutal treatment of white men. In other localities among the Piegans, where no alternative was open to the Indians, upward of four hundred were starved to death.-Selected.

Moderation is a little stream which flows softly, but freshens everything along its course.-Madame Swetchine.

One to-day is worth two to-morrows.-Franklin.

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Songs make their way.

-Boston Evening Transcript.

DAY AND NIGHT.

Y little daughter, happy in the day,
Called to caress me, coolly stays away:
I'm busy now, but in a little while

I'll come, mama," and with a careless smile
Contented plays, and I contented wait
For her caresses, no less sweet, though late.

My little daughter, waking in the night,
Stretches her arms and cries in sudden fright:
"Take me, mama! I want to come to you."
Impatient tears fill the sweet eyes of blue
If I delay to take her. Are not we-
Children of larger growth-as slow to see
The love and care of God in golden days?
But when the clouds of grief obscure joy's rays
We, too, cry out to God impatiently,
"Take me, O Father, take me unto Thee!"

-KATE TAYLOR-ROBINSON in Public Opinion

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THE LIBRARY.

UGHTON, Mifflin & Co., Boston, have issued a very satisfactory holiday book, composed of selections from the poems of John G. Whittier. It is a large quarto volume, and comprises thirteen of Whittier's "Poems of Nature," illustrated from nature by Elbridge Kingsley. The selection includes the most characteristic of Whittier's pieces, and the book is one of the finest pieces of printing yet produced from the Riverside press. But one side of the thick paper is covered, and this in English size of type. The Boston correspondent of the Hartford, (Conn.), Courant, noticing the volume, says: "The illustrations are of ocean, lake and mountain scenery, being largely occupied with some of the more picturesque White Mountain views. The artist has not hesitated to undertake some of the most difficult of them in depicting storms in their full fierceness of raging, and his success is conspicuous. The work has a good deal of novelty in this respect. It is confined entirely to landscape, and gives with fine effect the wide range of scenery in the Gateway to the White Mountains, as the opening picture is denominated, as well as Chocorua in a nearer view further on. This has always impressed me as the best of the White Mountain, scenery. The engraving is executed in some of the pictures with rare delicacy, especially in the effect of moonlight, and in the perfection with which the bark of the trees is reproduced. "Summer by the Lakeside" is one of the poems of the volume. I have long had these lines of that poem in memory. They seem to me the best Whittier has written, and indeed worthy of any poet:

'What time before the eastern light
The pale ghost of the setting moon
Shall hide behind yon rocky spines,
And the young archer, Morn, shall break
His arrows on the mountain pines,

And, golden-sandaled, walk the lake.”’

ORTHODOX FRIENDS.

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IN its issue of Tenth month 10th, the Friend contains the proceedings of Ohio Yearly Meeting, the "smaller body," which was held at Barnesville, Ohio, beginning on Ninth month 28th. At the select meeting, on the 26th, certificates were presented by Ruth S. Abbott, and her companion, George Abbott, of Salem, N. J.; Mary Ann Smith and her companion Margaret Stroud, from Wilmington, Delaware; and Deborah B. Webb, from Kennett, Penna. The meeting for worship, on First-day, was largely attended, 1500 being estimated as present. Epistles were received from the Western, Iowa, and Kansas Yearly Meetings, (smaller bodies), with which this is in unity, and replies were sent. A report from a committee on the "Scattered Remnants was presented, which recommended that official recognition be extended to the yearly meeting for New England, held at Westerly, R. I., of which John W. Foster was clerk; and to that for Canada, of which Adam Spencer was clerk. This proposal was united with. Steps were taken to unite Hickory Grove Quarterly Meet

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ing, in Iowa, heretofore under the care of this yearly meeting, with Iowa Yearly Meeting. "The propriety of bearing to those outside of our Society the testimony against intemperance which has long been borne to our own members, was introduced. The sentiment of the meeting appeared to be, that the meeting for sufferings was already authorized to take such steps in that direction as might open to it in the life; and that beyond this, it would be safest to leave the matter to the faithfulness of individual members, who were encouraged to exercise their influence against the evil. The excitement which now prevails on this subject in the world at large, it was thought rather closed the way for Friends as a Society to do much."

The London letter to Friends' Review says: "The little company of Friends of Stavanger, in Norway, has lost one of its oldest and best-known members, Endré Dahl, who died on the 10th inst. For about forty years he occupied a leading position amongst Friends in Norway, which was due, no doubt, to a liberal and enlightened mind, as well as to the fact that, belonging to a section of the church composed of members in very humble walks of life, he was himself possessed of ample means."

There are still a few Friends at Minden and Pyrmont, in Germany, whom Walter and Louisa Morris, English Friends who have been engaged in mission work in Denmark, expect presently to visit. (Pyrmont is in Westphalia; it was there that John Pemberton died, while on a religious visit, in 1794.)

A letter from S. E. W. Winslow, of North Carolina, to the Christian Worker, Chicago, dated Ninth month, 18th, says that a Friends' meeting was about to be opened at a place called Hopewell, and gives an account of its origin. There was at the place an ancient Friends' graveyard, but no meeting. In this ground, about eight months ago, was buried an estimable woman, who, early in life, was a Methodist, but for many years had wished to have a Friends' meeting there and inclined to join it. After the funeral, which was very large, her son (who also was not a Friend), hearing of his mother's ardent desires, concluded to join with others in the erection of a house; and a Friends' meeting and a large First-day school are now held there.

At Western Yearly Meeting, (larger body), the statistical report was as follows: number of meetings, 86; members, 12,745; families, 2,173; parts of families, 1,416; ministers, 137; meetings without ministers, 24; members received by request, 772; received otherwise, 383; total received, 1,155; total subtraction, 759; actual gain, 396.

THE TAYLOR MISSION IN AFRICA.

LETTERS from Bishop Wm. Taylor, dated at Don

do, on the 18th of Seventh month, have been made public. Some of the details contained in them are as follows: "We [himself, McLean, and Henry Kelly, a young black man from Liberia] walked from Nhange to this place, 51 miles, in 21⁄2 days. We could do it in 2. We brought with us 12

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