HYA CINTH-B ULBS. 8 1 7 



duties, but it certainly might be a barrier to them more formidable 

 than unprofessional critics are likely to suppose possible. Dr. Beddoes 

 suggested that Swift was impotent from youthful dissipation, of which 

 there is not a tittle of evidence. May not the great and grave disease 

 of which I have adduced such copious evidence have been the real 

 reason why Swift did not live with the woman whom it is certain that 

 he loved with the most tender and persistent devotion ? Brain. 



HYACINTn -BULBS. 



By Professor GEANT ALLEN. 



IF we were not so familiar with the fact, we would think there were 

 few queerer things in nature than the mode of growth followed 

 by this sprouting hyacinth-bulb on my mantel-piece here. It is simply 

 stuck in a glass stand filled with water, and there, with little aid from 

 light or sunshine, it goes through its whole development like a piece of 

 organic clock-work, as it is, running down slowly in its own appointed 

 course. For a bulb does not grow as an ordinary plant grows, solely 

 by means of carbon derived from the air under the influence of sun- 

 light. What we call its growth we ought rather to call its unfolding. 

 It contains within itself everything that is necessary for its own vital 

 processes. Even if I were to cover it up entirely, or put it in a warm, 

 dark room, it would sprout and unfold itself in exactly the same way 

 as it does here in the diffused light of my study. The leaves, it is 

 true, would be blanched and almost colorless, but the flowers would 

 be just as brilliantly blue as these which are now scenting the whole 

 room with their delicious fragrance. The question is, then, how can 

 the hyacinth thus live and grow without the apparent aid of sunlight, 

 on which all vegetation is ultimately based ? 



Of course, an ordinary plant, as everybody knows, derives all its 

 energy or motive-power from the sun. The green leaf is the organ 

 upon which the rays act. In its cells the waves of light propagated 

 from the sun fall upon the carbonic acid which the leaves drink in 

 from the air, and, by their disintegrating power, liberate the oxygen 

 while setting free the carbon, to form the fuel and food-stuff of the 

 plant. Side by side with this operation the plant performs another, 

 by building up the carbon thus obtained into new combinations with 

 the hydrogen obtained from its watery sap. From these two elements 

 the chief constituents of the vegetable tissues are made up. Now, the 

 fact that they have been freed from the oxygen with which they are 

 generally combined gives them energy, as the physicists call it, and, 

 when they recombine with oxygen, this energy is again given out as 

 heat, or motion. In burning a piece of wood or a lump of coal, we 

 vol. xx. 52 



