ARfiOR DA Y MAX UAL. 2 I 5 



But the palms are not only poets, they are prophets as well. They are like 

 heralds sent forth upon the farthest points to celebrate- to the traveler the glor- 

 ies they show. Like spring birds, they sing a summer unfading, and climes 

 where time wears the year as a queen a rosary of diamonds. The mariner, 

 eastward sailing, hears tidings from the chance palms that hang along the 

 southern Italian shore. They call out to him across the gleaming calm of a 

 Mediterranean noon, "Thou happy mariner, our souls sail with thee." 



In the land of Egypt palms are perpetual. They are the only foliage of the 

 Nile, for we will not harm the modest}- of a ftw mimosas and sycamores by 

 foolish claims. They are the shade of the mud villages, marking their site in 

 the landscape, so that the groups of palms are the number of the villages. They 

 fringe the shore and the horizon. The sun sets golden behind them, and birds 

 sit swinging upon .their boughs and float glorious among their trunks ; the 

 sugar cane is not harmed by the ghostly shade ; and the yellow flowers of the 

 cotton plant star its dusk at evening. The children play under them, and the 

 old men crone and smoke, the donkeys graze, and there the surly bison and 

 the conceited camels repose. 



The eye never wearies of palms, more than the ear of singing birds. Solitary 

 they stand upon the sand, or upon the level fertile land in groups, with a grace 

 and dignity that no tree surpasses. Very soon the eye beholds, in their forms, 

 the original type of the columns which it will afterwards admire in the temples. 

 Almost the first palm is architecturally suggestive, even in western gardens 

 but to artists living among them and seeing only them ! Men's hands are not 

 delicate in the early ages, and the fountain fairness of the palms is not very 

 flowingly fashioned in the capitals; but in the flowery perfection of the Par- 

 thenon the palm triumphs. The forms of those columns came from Egypt, and 

 that which was the suspicion of the earlier workers, was the success of more 

 delicate designing. So is the palm inwound with our art, and poetry, and 

 religion. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 



FOREST FLOWERS. 



OUR forests are fast disappearing. In their sheltering shade and the rich 

 mould of their annually decaying leaves, the greater number of our love- 

 liest plants are found; and when the axe comes, that cruel weapon that wars 

 upon nature's freshness, and the noble oak, the elm, the beech, the maple, and 

 the tulip tree fall with a loud crash in the peaceful solitude, even the very 

 birds can understand that a floral death knell sounds through the melodious 

 wilderness. 



A number of our choicest plants are threatened with extinction; for as the woods 

 are cleared away these tender offsprings, the pretty flowers which we so dearly 

 cherish, will perish utterly. It is, therefore, well to prevent as far as possible 

 the destruction of our native forests, as well as to plant forest trees if for no 

 ether purpose than the preservation of the little helpless, blooming beauties 

 that adorn our woodland shades. 



GUSTAVUS FRANKENSTEIN. 



