384 A PHILOSOPHICAL MEDITATION. 



hue and exquisite beauty of outline ; and the leaves, which are 

 heart-shaped, equally claim our admiration. Like the pink field- 

 convolvulus (Convolvulus arvensis), or the rosy-hued seaside 

 bindweed (Calystegia soldanelld), it is very tenacious of life, and 

 if it once secures a footing, is eradicated with difficulty. Hence 

 it is dearer to the poet and artist than to the farmer and gar- 

 dener, each of whom pursues it with a determined hostility. 



The Convolvulacese form a distinct family or order, con- 

 taining forty-five genera, and upwards of seven hundred species. 

 They are found in temperate and tropical countries ; and in- 

 clude the dodder, sweet potato, scammony, spomcea, and the 

 jalap plant. 



METAMORPHOSIS. A PHYSICO-PHILOSOPHICAL MEDITATION.* 

 If we are to understand by the term metamorphosis simply 

 " a change," it is evident that everybody undergoes metamor- 

 phosis, is changed or transformed ; nothing is, all becomes. 



The water which flows on for ever, but never twice washes 

 the same pebbly bed, will afford us an apt image of this 

 perpetual " to become." 



But even the said pebbly bed, like the hardest rock, like the 

 seemingly everlasting granite, must and does change. The 

 compact, chrystalline, azoic rock, without a trace of life in its 

 dense mass, would eventually decompose if constantly assailed 

 and affected by the moving waves of that gaseous ocean whose 

 bed is formed by the terrestrial crust. If the rock is found 

 covered by more or less stratified layers, its presence in the 

 * This section is translated from M. Hoefer, without addition or alteration 



