MISCELLANEOUS. 253 



mystery of growth ; and, il you love children, give them 

 object-lessons with your microscope, and especially with 

 flowers ; show them " how they grow ; " but remember, 

 before you attempt to teach, you yourself must have been 

 taught. Nature is the best of teacher?, and her object- 

 lessons commend themselves to every thoughtful mind ; 

 but that mind must have been prepared, or rather pre- 

 disposed, to receive her deep truths, or they will fall upon 

 stony or thorny ground, and bring no fruit to perfection. 



Light, life, growth, fruit, this is the law, not only in 

 the spiritual but the natural world ; each is dependent 

 upon the other, and if one of these four elements be 

 omitted the end will be defeated: but what a mystery 

 each of them is ! 



When you look at ferns and mosses, while you are 

 amazed at their beauty, only think of their mysterious 

 power of reproduction. The hart's-tongue fern has about 

 eighty seed-vessels upon each frond, each vessel containing 

 about fifty spores or seeds : each frond may be the bearer 

 of from three to six thousand seeds, and upon the entire 

 plant so many as eighteen millions have been reckoned. 



The contrasts in nature will greatly interest and 

 astonish you. If you examine what is called the " smut " 

 in corn, from its striking resemblance to chimney-soot, 

 there you will find that every tiny ultimate speck is a 

 true vegetable, and that in one grain so many as four 

 millions may be counted; then if you examine the 

 beautiful structure of that Californian giant, the Welling- 

 tonia gigantea, you will learn something of the mystery 

 of growth in a tree that botanists tell us, by its annual 

 marks, must have been four thousand years old, having 

 only arrived at perfection when it stood twenty-three feet 

 higher than St. Paul's Cathedral. Even in our own land 

 the yew and oak will flourish over a thousand years. 



