of the finest threads. To the naked eye, it presents no character by which it may be known from any coarse and loosely-woven cloth. The microscope reveals its nature. It is then found to consist of myriads of jointed threads, whose joints are composed alternately sideways and vertically; they are here and there transparent, but for the most part opaque and rough to the eye. The white side is more opaque than the other, and more unexaminable; but if a little muriatic acid be added to the water in which the fragments of water-flannel float, copious bubbles of air appear. These are bubbles of carbonic acid, extricated by the action of the muriatic acid on a coating of carbonate of lime, with which the plant is more or less completely invested. If, after this operation, the threads are again examined, the contents of the joints become visible in the green parts of the flannel, they were filled with an irregular mass of green matter; in the white part with myriads of globules, intermixed with a shapeless substance. The globules are the seeds. If a little iodine be then given to the flannel, it is readily absorbed; and the contents, shapeless matter, globules, and all, become deep violet, showing that all this substance is starch. Hence it appears that the water-flannel is a microscopic plant, composed of jointed threads, secreting carbonate of lime on their surface, and forming seeds composed of starch within them. And when we consider that the joints are smaller than the eye can detect, while each contains from fifty to one hundred seeds, it may easily be conceived with what rapidity such a plant is multiplied. Besides which, as their contents consist to a great extent of starch, the most readily organisable of vegetable materials, the means of growth with which the plant is provided are far more ample than anything we know of in the higher orders of the vegetable kingdom."

This vegetable swarms on stagnant pools, where it lives on decomposed particles, and thus, while it tends to purify the waters, itself becomes food for myriads of animalcules. Much more curious information remains to be mentioned respecting mosses, lichens

and other forms of flowerless vegetation,-even yeast might be adduced as another instance, for it is supposed by botanists to belong to this genera of the vegetable world, which, according to Humboldt, comprises forty-four thousand species. The main object of a plant during growth seems to be the reproduction of its kind: whether the term of its being be limited to a day, a year, or centuries, its sole effort, as it proceeds from leaf to stem, from stem to branch, and from branch to flower and fruit, is the multiplication of itself. This is variously effected: by seeds, by spores or embryo plants, by tubers, by runners which put forth shoots as they elongate, by branches which send down roots, either by slips or detached branches or single leaves. The most familiar process of reproduction-common to all flowering plants—is the first named. Seeds are merely leaves preserved in peculiar cerements against the return of the season of growth: they are also furnished with a sufficiency of nutriment for the embryo plant, till its roots shall have struck into the soil, and it expands into the atmosphere. Their coverings also evince the ingenious contrivance of nature, for these provide against the several contingencies to which they may be subjected for example, the cocoa has a tough fibrous coir and woody nut, impervious alike to drought and rain-the chestnut, a compact leathery envelope-the peach, a hard, strong drape—the apple, a fleshy pome, enclosing leathery cells-the pea and bean, a pod of parchment. This accounts, to a great degree, for the modern marvel, that even the seeds taken from the hand of an Egyptian mummy, more than three thousand years old, should have yet retained their vitality, and thus produced a crop of wheat. The various metamorphoses which occur to plants and flowers, present an interesting topic of research,-embracing the vast changes and improvements which cultivation of soil, transplanting, and the important effects of chemistry, as applied to agriculture, have produced. The principal phenomena of vegetable life, or irritability, are those caused by atmospheric influences, those depending upon the touch of other bodies, and those which appear

to be perfectly spontaneous. The former include all such plants or flowers as close their leaves during night, when they are said to sleep, as well as those that open or shut their petals to the sun. A singular instance of sensitiveness to touch is observable in Venus' fly-trap, which is, we believe, a native of North Carolina. A poetical fancy has even invested vegetable life with the attributes of sensation and enjoyment; but the hypothesis is unsustained by science, notwithstanding polypi and sponges seem to approach very close to a demonstration of the theory. There may be a seeming analogy between the brain and nerves of animals, and the vessels of plants, but there is nothing like indentity between the respective functions of the two great kingdoms. Notwithstanding all the light which modern science has shed upon organic life, the learned are yet undecided as to the precise boundary line which divides these two departments of animated nature between the lowly forms of corallines, sponges, and polypi, and the more dormant specimens of the animal kingdom. Here, however, we close our brief sketch of the more remarkable and anomalous features of vegetable life, conscious that a subject of such surpassing interest, has failed of its full development: yet believing that, as a topic of recreative study, it may with confidence be commended to a more extended investigation on the part of the reader, for its resources are as exhaustless as they are rife with delightful interest.

"Not a plant, a leaf, a flower, but contains

A folio volume, we may read, and read,

And read again, and still find something new-
Something to please, something to instruct,
Even in the noisome weed."

"A spot near Cripplegate extends

Grub street, 't is called the modern Pindus ;

Where (not that bards are never friends)

Bards might shake hands from adverse windows "-HUDIBRAS

THE subject we propose to contemplate in the present chapter, presents the various fallacies and foibles of the literary profession. Without attempting a psychological analysis of literary life, we propose simply to group together a few of the more striking idiosyncracies which seem to be indigenous to great minds. If frailty and fame are twin attributes, one might be tempted to conclude that nature designed such an allotment as an equipoise, to silence the envy of those from whom she has withheld her noblest endowments in the one case, and to serve as a counteracting check to the inordinate self-esteem, which their possession might otherwise superinduce in the other.

Possession of the creative faculty, says Leigh Hunt, pre-supposes a superiority to adverse circumstances, and "low thoughted

care;" and Goldsmith, sitting in his garret with a worsted stock ing on his head :—

"Where the Red Lion, staring o'er the way,

Invites each passing stranger, that can pay,"

in spite of bailiffs, writs, debts, duns, and milk scores, the most horrible that even Hogarth imagined, was still a happy fellow, satisfied that he would pay if he could, which is all that is necessary to establish the morale of his character upon high ground, he leaves the affairs of the world to right themselves, and enjoys the everlasting day rule of his imagination. So it was with Fielding, Goldsmith, Steele, and others, honorable in literature, and so also with Handel, Mozart, and Weber, in music; and it is one of the kindly recompenses of nature, by which she contrives, on the whole, to adjust so equitably the good and the evil of this life, that when injury to the individual arises from an excess of sympathy with the mass, that injury is commonly but lightly felt. It is affecting to think that during the composition of his great master-pieces, Mozart's family at times wanted the common necessaries of life. Such adversity must have been a sharp thorn in the side of so gentle and sensitive a nature as his. Handel's immortal oratorios were produced under similar circumstances, after the attack of a threatening and fatal disorder, that resulted in his total blindness.

It is supposed, and with great reason, that but for these precise circumstances, men of genius, naturally indolent, would not have achieved so much, or so well; under more favorable auspices their nergies would have remained dormant, for lack of stimulus. Burns as an instance of an author writing for love, and not for money, for he got little pecuniary reward for his exquisite effusions, and was ever in pecuniary embarrassments. Beaumont asserts that a man of genius could no more help putting his thoughts on paper, than a traveler in a burning desert could help drinking when he sees water. To quote his words :