comprehended as an isolated fact in the great universal exhibition of an ocean of colours, viz., that of the leaves of a tree from top to bottom possessing the colour of gamboge, with a creeping plant encircling it from one extremity to the other, with a hue as red as fire-in other words, picture a fiery serpent giving a tender, twisted and spiral embrace to a tree as yellow as gamboge, and that standing in contact with another tree quite natural and unfaded with its leaves of a vivid and lively green, with the glorious light of Heaven shedding its rays upon all three. Let the reader further picture to his imagination that this is not confined to a locality resembling a detached plantation or small group of trees; but that it is vast as the heavens to the view of the traveller, wide as the ocean to the eye of the poet, and that this painted, variegated, and fiery forest occupies the entire surface of the horizon, except where a clearing has been effected. It is such a picture as neither the artist nor the poet ever dreamt of during all the excessive vagaries of a fertile and heated imagination under the sway of its strongest influences. It contains all the elements of the lovely, the beautiful, and the sublime; all that can startle, astonish and electrify; it is an antidote to the irritable temper; a medicine and sedative to the mind and body temporarily afflicted. It is calming and soothing in one locality and exciting in another.

In the storm at sea, in the hurricane on land, and in the thunderstorm of the heavens, we behold. sublimity and sublimity alone! All the diversified effects of which the passions and the feelings are susceptible, here have a picture and a motive to influence them. All that can elevate the soul to the highest pitch to grasp sublimity itself; and all that can depress it with the most painful and gloomy, yet endurable, melancholy here has a reality.

It contains all the elements that the poet delights to revel in; all that the painter could wish to realize; and more mysterious than science can unravel. It is a scene in which the musician may take a lesson in all that is astonishing in the beautiful and various combinations of harmony; in all that is requisite to give complete expression to melody, from the thundering oratorio down to the simple ballad. In short, it is a picture painted by the Almighty finger of the Deity himself, having the primeval forest for His canvass, the glorious light of heaven for a window to illumine it, and the broad expanse of the universe for His picture gallery! And through which with the eye of faith the Christian philosopher, the painter, the poet, and the peasant can humbly look up to that adorable Being who sits enthroned in those realms of bliss that eye hath not seen, ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man to conceive! Such then is botany in a North American forest.

I've seen the insect bright and gay
Wing its swift fantastic way;
I've seen the flower with varied hue
Gracefully bedecked with dew.

All nature's charms I've felt and seen,
Wherever I have roving been;
But beauty, with her fairest grace,
Resides in woman's lovely face.

I've seen the glorious light of morn
Along the vault of heaven borne ;
I've seen the sun set red and bright,
With all his splendour wish good night;
I've seen the bird on rapid wing,
And listened when it chanced to sing;
But beauty in its perfect style
I've seen alone in woman's smile.

JOHN SHAW.

CHAPTER II.

Mountainous Regions of the Earth-Scotland-Norwegian Pine Forests-Norwegian and Scottish Moors-Peculiar Features of the Coast of Norway-Various Colours of the Ocean-The Great Links of Knowledge.

I HAVE now brought my readers to the end of one chapter, which will enable him to judge of the kind of mental entertainment he is likely to have for the future. Should he deem me worthy of a further perusal, I will promise him no certain bill of fare; no outline of what I am going to chat about; but I will offer him the cordial hand of fellowship and sympathy; and if, on the first shake of the hand, he should discover that he has formed a new acquaintance in whom he takes but little interest, may I beg of him not to kick me off all of a sudden, but to try me a second time.

In the last chapter I have occupied his attention exclusively with botany and travelling, in order to show to him that, to whatever region of the great globe he may travel, he may be surrounded by phenomena of the vegetable world, which cannot fail to attract attention, excite his curiosity, improve his mind, fix his morals with a firm resolve, if rightly discerned, and gradually lead him from the realms of nature up to its great Author, from whose throne he may acquire all that is calculated to make him, not a shadow of a man, but a real, rational, reflecting, useful, and honest man.

The reader must have observed, that I have not troubled him with any of those hard names in botanical technology derived from the Greek and

Latin languages; and, consequently, he cannot charge me with having puzzled his memory, or put his mental faculties upon the high stretch to comprehend the paragraphs and sentences contained in the previous chapter. Had I determined to have discussed with him scientific botany, I should have commenced with an account of the structure of plants, or their anatomy so to speak; of their physiology, which latter science teaches the principles of life in organic nature; and of the laws that govern and produce vitality both in plants and in animals. I might have spoken also of their classification, according to the various systems of Linnæus, Decandole, or Jussieu, and of the many productions of the vege table kingdom used as food for animals as well as man; of the various vegetable substances employed in the arts, manufactures, agriculture, commerce, and trade. The delightful studies of structural and physiological botany should be taught in Universities or schools, by the aid of good teachers and books; by frequent visits to a well-stocked botanic garden, containing all the different groups of plants, trees, shrubs, and flowers, which are to be found in the hothouse, the greenhouse, or conservatory, and the open air.

Although it is not my intention to undertake any of these subjects specifically with a view to scientific instruction to the reader, still I must beg of him not to get weary of me, whilst I point out other leading features of this wonderful division of Nature's wide domain, with a view to arrest his attention, and, by so doing, perhaps lay the foundation of a determination on his part to take up the subject thoroughly and scientifically, and thereby put him in possession of that knowledge which will not only prove useful to him, but, at the same time, amusing, entertaining, and profitable.

We may perhaps at some future period chat a

little about geology, ornithology, ichthyology, entomology, in order that he may not take fright at the idea of still being occupied in this chapter with more talk about botany. I will promise him, however, besides that, I shall attempt to entertain him with a bill of fare which shall contain chat connected not only with natural history-but many other topics and subjects of the highest possible interest to himself, as well as to the community by which he is surrounded.

The universal distribution of plants, trees, flowers, shrubs, mosses, lichens, alga (or sea-weeds), whose habitat is either on the islands of the oceans, or on the many coasts which define and circumscribe this extensive and widely-expanded world of water, forms then a feature of peculiar interest, from the very fact of its universality.

We have seen, in the previous chapter, that the vegetable kingdom extends over such a vast area of the earth's crust, so as to form the seventh part of that enormous totality of the Great Creator's wonderful, sublime, and immense universe. I say universe, for I speak of it in relation to the heavenly bodies. And when we contemplate it in connexion with our own world, we find that the ocean and the desert are not deprived of their respective plants or floras, as they are scientifically and properly termed.

We have seen that the great American prairie is entirely composed of grasses and flowers of a peculiar kind. We have seen, also, that the majestic primeval forests of North America are entirely constituted by an assemblage of wonderful and colossal trees; that lakes, rivers, ponds, and ditches, as well as swamps, alike contain them; and that the earth in every part of its extended surface, with but few exceptions, possesses some particular division of the great and beautiful and various vegetable kingdom.