that by the ingraftment and coalescence of the two germs of each pair of flowers, only a single scarlet berry is produced, but containing four seeds, pp. 61, 62.

An interesting account is given of the Agavé, or American Aloe, the curious plant which is generally supposed not to flower until it has lived to the age of one hundred years, when the effort costs it its life; thence commonly called the Century-plant.

The Agave or American Aloe, referred to the BROMELIÆ or natural order of the Pine Apple, is a very remarkable genus, of which there is one species growing native in Virginia and the southern states. The corolla, of a greenish color, is superior, erect, and tubular, or funnel-form. The stamina are erect, and extend beyond the corolla. The capsule is bluntly triangular and many-seeded. The tardy flowering species, A. americana, of Mexico, which in cold climates has been cultivated near a century before flowering, arrives at this state in six or seven years in its native climate, and in the warmth of Sicily. Before this period the plant presents nothing but a perpetually unfolding cone of long, rather narrow, but thick and fleshy leaves, pointed, and beset on their margins with strong thorns. Before flowering, this cone and cluster of leaves attains an enormous bulk and developement; at length, it swells more than usual, the circulation of the sap in the outer leaves becomes visibly retarded, and they put on a shrivelled aspect. At this period, the Mexicans who cultivate this plant, which they call magui, tap it for the juice with which it now abounds, and many gallons of sap continue for a time to exude from this vegetable fountain. From this liquor, when fermented, is distilled the common spirit drunk throughout that country, and when the plant is finally exhausted, its tenacious and abundant fibres afford a durable hemp or flax. If suffered to flower, it sends up a central scapus from eighteen to thirty feet high, resembling a huge chandelier with numerous clustered branches, bearing several thousands of elegant but not showy, greenish yellow flowers, from which slowly drops a shower of honey. With the flowering the energies of the plant become exhausted, and it then perishes, however long it may have previously existed, but at the same time it sends up from the root numerous offsets for the purpose of viviparous propagation." pp. 89, 90.

We sincerely hope that this new publication, so well calculated to facilitate and throw a charm over the study of botany, may have the effect so much desired by its zealous author, and lead to a more general as well as a more intelligent pursuit of this fascinating science. A purer source of rational enjoyment does not

exist than is thus opened to the inquisitive mind. There is undoubtedly much satisfaction of a calm and dignified kind to be taken in the bare contemplation of natural objects; the imagination of the pious enthusiast has ever revelled amid the grand and magnificent works of God outspread before him. But nature, to be known, must be studied; and the careful examination of a single natural object may disclose greater wonders and inspire a stronger feeling of astonishment and delight, than a superficial survey of the whole firmament studded with its thousand fires.

There is no solemn affectation in the pleasures of the naturalist; they are pure, sensible, real. He does not fold his arms and saunter forth with an air of self-importance, deigning only to survey those more sublime objects which Nature has placed beyond the full grasp of reason, and treading thoughtlessly on the more common, but not less wonderful and curious productions of creative wisdom. He explores nature with the same interest in the gayest flower and the meanest weed; swamps and bogs teeming with vegetable life are far more gratifying to his eye and tempting to his steps than the nicely trimmed walk or the velvet lawn.

"The meanest floweret of the vale,

The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening paradise."

Time and space would fail us to enumerate all the inducements presented for the pursuit of botanical knowledge. Nature with open hands is inviting us into the fields,

Health urges her claim, and the rewards of scientific exertion await the successful inquirer.

MISCELLANY.

A NARRATIVE

OF SOME EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES THAT HAPPENED MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS SINCE.

Few places in our country have any traditions of moment associated with them, and of these few a very small proportion are the objects of superstitious awe. Here and there, however, you meet with a spot memorable for one of those terrible interpositions of Providence, which seem directly aimed to punish or prevent guilt. The state of religious belief in our country readily adopts these solutions of the ways of Heaven, and the freedom with which the motives of the Ruler of all things for permitting a particular event to happen, is assigned, were it not for the found sincerity and solemnity with which it is accompanied, might justly be thought daring and irreverent.

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I knew one of those spots not many years since. It was in a kind of wild neglected pasture that stretched along the side of a hill worn into terraces by the paths of cattle and sheep. At one end, close to the skirt of a tall wood, was a circle of ground nearly level, in the middle of which was sunk a little hollow, four or five feet over, bordered with fragments of rock, and half surrounded by bushes. I often used to visit it, for it commanded a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains, the valley between, and the river which flowed through the valley. In the northeast the smoke-wreaths from the houses that stood unseen between the hills, rose as if proceeding directly from the ground, and the spire of the church looked as if planted in the midst of a green field. A little farther to the south the hills receded from each other, the meadows grew wider and wider, and the river came forth as if issuing from a chasm in the earth, and glided away, rejoicing, through the thick grass and occasional borderings of trees, till its course was lost to the sight.

I became the more fond of this little nook, as a kind of dread with which the neighbourhood regarded it, had caused it to be abandoned to me alone. The snow at the end of winter, whether from the natural warmth of the soil or the favorable exposure, was melted away here sooner than in the neighbouring fields, and the verdure was earlier and brighter. I found the fragments of

rock about the little hollow edged with the first flowers of spring. The blossoms of the liver-leaf and of the vernal saxifrage wagged their heads in the first soft winds of the season. A little later, the erythronium opened and glittered in the dew like a jewel of beaten gold for the ear of an Indian princess. I came hither in the summer to gather the black raspberry which ripened in the sun to an intense sweetness, and was never plucked save by myself and the birds that built their nests unscared on the neighbouring shrubs. I loved to sit here in the long days of June, and look out upon the valleys that lay in the deluge of light and heat, and watch the shadows of the clouds as they ran along the sides of the mountains. In autumn I found, on the alders and witch hazels, clusters of the wild grape which the schoolboy had left untouched. I knew well that some tradition of horror was connected with the place, but I cared not to inquire into its particulars, for I did not wish to mingle ideas of human suffering and guilt with those of the peace and innocence of nature.

At last the story was told me. One of those kind communicative beings who cannot bear that any body should remain ignorant of any thing concerning which it is in their power to afford information, one day insisted on my knowing the whole, and common courtesy obliged me to listen. I have committed his narrrative to writing, relating the circumstances in my own way.

At a little distance from the spot I have described, and near the foot of the hill, were to be seen at the time of which I am speaking, and probably are to be seen yet, the ruins of an old dwelling. A square hollow showed where the cellar had been, and the shape of the old sills on which the house was built was still discernible under the green turf by which they were overgrown. A patch of tansy and a few long-lived currant bushes marked the place of the garden, and hard by was an old well, filled up with loose stones. It is now more than twenty years since that habitation was abandoned and pulled down, and the place that was once noisy with the cries of domestic animals, the hum of household industry, and the accents of the human voice, now hears no other noise than that of the neighbouring brook leaping down its stony channel, and brawling all day long to the witchhopples and dwarf maples that overshadow it. Its last tenant, however, old Jacob Holmes, is still well remembered in those parts; a tall, spare, large-boned man, with a stooping figure, an ashy complexion, and thick, white, bushy eyebrows, under which a pair of grey eyes skulked in ambush, observing every thing, and themselves almost entirely screened from observation. He

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lived in a neighbourhood of industrious farmers, but no one of them all prospered like him; his cattle always throve, his barns and granaries were crammed till they could hold no more with the abundance of his crops, he had the art of getting more work out of his laborers than any man in the whole country, and what was still more extraordinary, he was never known to be overreached in a bargain. On a quiet summer evening, as he sat at his window, and looked out upon his farm, just at the going down of the sun, his grey eyes would twinkle from their concealment with evident satisfaction as he beheld every where the signs of thrift, heavy oats, thick wheat, broad acres of Indian corn in rows of the darkest and healthiest green, sheep on well-browsed hills, and sleek kine coming home in the road with a white-haired boy and their own long shadows stalking behind them. In short, it was very evident that Holmes laid up money, and after this was once discovered there were frequently seen about him divers men of obsequious manners, who spoke in a low tone of voice. These were the people who wanted to borrow, and Holmes was not unwilling to lend on good security. But as ill luck would have it, he was never able to furnish the exact amount of money the borrower wanted, who was therefore obliged to take an old horse, a few bushels of corn, or a few loads of potatoes, to make up the sum required, a process which the sagacious old usurer found to be an easier and more profitable way of disposing of this kind of property than by sending it to market. The debt thus contracted was generally secured by a snug mortgage, which the creditor took care to foreclose in due time. In this way he saw his possessions gradually enlarging around him, meadow joined itself to meadow, and woodland was added to woodland, until at length he had rolled together a very considerable estate.

Among the miseries of the rich, not the least is their anxiety concerning what will become of their money after they are dead. In this country, and perhaps in others, one of two things very commonly happens to a man who has the good or ill fortune to be richer than his neighbours. Either he has a graceless son who squanders for him all he can lay hands on in his lifetime, and only waits for his last breath to begin squandering the rest; or else a wayward daughter, who falls in love with whom she pleases, marries him in spite of her honored father, and obliges the old gentleman, if he leaves his property to his own offspring, to leave it to be enjoyed by the very fellow whom of all the world he detests the most heartily. Old Holmes was under no apprehensions of the first of these misfortunes, for he had no sons; but he