344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



servatory at Kdnigsberg. At twenty-six years of age, without ever 

 having been in a university, he took rank as one of the first professors 

 in the University of Konigsberg. 



We thus see that Bessel was, in the broadest sense of the word, a 

 self-made man. But it can not be said that he was a genius. Ideas 

 did not come to him as the manna to the children of Israel in the des- 

 ert. He acquired all his knowledge solely by his excessive application 

 and by his indomitable energy in pursuing the end he was aiming at. 

 I do not think that his natural talent exceeded the mean which Nature 

 has given to all. We feel, in reading Bessel, not the sense of a sud- 

 den induction which is frequently given to the mathematician as well 

 as to the astronomer but rather that of a continuous labor, which 

 draws new and exact conclusions from materials previously accumu- 

 lated, and knows how to make a practical use of. Translated for the 

 Popular Science Monthly from Ciel et Terre. 



- 



ON LEAVES. 



Br Sib JOHN LUBBOCK. 



I. 



MR. RTJSKIN, in one of his most exquisite passages, has told us 

 that " flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary hu- 

 manity : children love them ; tender, contented, ordinary people love 

 them. They are the cottager's treasure ; and in the crowded town 

 mark, as with a little broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the 

 workers in whose heart rests the covenant of peace." I should be un- 

 grateful indeed did I not fully feel the force of this truth ; but yet it 

 must be confessed that the beauty of our woods and fields is due at 

 least as much to foliage as to flowers. 



In the words of the same author, " The leaves of the herbage at our 

 feet take all kinds of strange shapes, as if to invite us to examine them. 

 Star-shaped, heart-shaped, spear-shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, fringed, 

 cleft, furrowed, serrated, sinuated, in whorls, in tufts, in spires, in 

 wreaths, endlessly expressive, deceptive, fantastic, never the same from 

 footstalk to blossom, they seem perpetually to tempt our watchfulness 

 and take delight in outstripping our wonder." 



Now, why is this marvelous variety, this inexhaustible treasury 

 of beautiful forms ? Does it result from some innate tendency of 

 each species ? Is it intentionally designed to delight the eye of 

 man ? or have the form, and size, and texture some reference to the 

 structure and organization, the habits and requirements, of the whole 

 plant ? 



