74 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



igaea, the faintest blue casrulean of the daring little hepatica, 

 the wooly-headed mouse ear, and the bursting, yet coquet- 

 tish saxifrage, — you may find, if you will, many a sweet 

 promise of coming beauty in the refreshing greenery of hum- 

 ble plants, aye in the very weeds of our gardens, which 

 would cheer the hearts of many a bold adventurer, could he 

 see these lowly congeners and cospecies of more gorgeous 

 plants in regions whose brief summer is scarcely marked with 

 more beauty, or whose scattered herbage whispers to him of 

 gardens and meadows, of forests and orchards, breathing per- 

 fume and redolent with song. 



The physiologist assures us of two kinds of animal growth, 

 to one of which he assigns the name of vegetative. There 

 is more sense than sound, more truth than analogy, in this 

 term. The microscope resolves into ultimate particles the 

 tissues of the animal structure and exhibits the fluids which 

 are poured into artery and vein, from gland and membrane, 

 as " living, moving and having a being " in separate organ- 

 isms, cells, spheres, fitted with nuclei and with principles of 

 future increase and constant presence. They multiply and 

 grow and give form and shape, beauty and harmony, grace 

 and elegance, utility and an ultimate purpose and end, to 

 such parts as are fashioned and nourished by them. Perhaps 

 it is, that we love plants and trees and flowers, the grass, the 

 orchard, the old mossy oak, the whispering pine, the emerald 

 moss and the dullest grey lichens, because we are made some- 

 what thus in their image, and bear within the same principle 

 of life that sustains and invigorates them. Certain ! that we 

 lose nothing by such an aff'ection — it neither unfits us for 

 sterner duties, nor eff'eminates us to the incapacity to enjoy 

 that higher destiny which is peculiarly our own. A blood 

 disc is a nucleated cell, and countless myriads course through 

 every vein and veinlet of the body, to render, in their tide of 

 hurrying motion, the blushing beauty of health to the system. 

 A single drop of this rich and bounteous fluid I find teeming 

 thus with the mysterious presence of these organic particles : 

 and I stand thus on the limits of organized materialities, find- 

 ing in each a volume of study and research. My microscope 



