200 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



we to omit mentioning here, in humble gratitude, that 

 Columbus, when his crew mutinied, and his brave heart 

 nearly failed him, felt his hopes revived and his courage 

 restored by the sweet odor of sassafras, which the land- 

 breeze brought upon its wings from the distant shores of 

 the New World. 



The oddest shapes of flowers are probably found among 

 the orchidacese of this continent, whose flowers, rich in 

 every shade and variety of color, portray in their extra- 

 ordinary formation almost the entire scope of animated 

 nature, beasts, birds, and fishes. Some represent a helmet 

 with its visor up ; others look like ants and larger insects. 

 The bee and the fly, the spider and the lizard^ are each 

 accurately copied in certain varieties ; one looks for all 

 the life like a dove, and is irreverently called the Holy 

 Ghost ; and another resembles a large and beautiful but- 

 terfly so closely as to deceive even the instinct of birds. 



It is perhaps one of the most curious, and, as yet, most 

 mysterious features in the life of plants, that the appear- 

 ance of flowers is in some instances accompanied by very 

 remarkable phenomena. In many of our creepers, in the 

 lilies and the common gourd, a kind of fever-heat is per- 

 ceptible at the time of inflorescence. Sometimes it ap- 

 pears in paroxysms, then again it rises and falls regularly, 

 and so distinctly, that in one plant, which has perhaps 

 only been subjected to more careful observations than 

 others, the heat has been noticed to increase daily from 

 60 to 110, or even 120 degrees, and then again to fall to 

 the temperature of the atmosphere. Some have thought 

 that this very striking peculiarity of certain flowers might 



