CULTURE OF PLANTS. 



even farther : we have taught a number of the 

 cruciferce, or plants with four petals in the flower, 

 arranged like the arms of a cross, to linger in the 

 bulbs of their stems, their leaves, or their flower- 

 buds, and there form stores of provision for us ; 

 and we have educated some of the early varieties 

 of the potatoe, out of the habit of bearing flowers 

 altogether, just as we have educated other plants out 

 of the habit of maturing seeds. All that has been 

 done in consequence of careful observation of 

 nature ; much of it by observing the effects of the 

 sunbeams in their compound state ; and not a 

 little of that which regards colour, by observing 

 the action of those beams considered merely as 

 light. 



Sunbeams are indeed wonderful things. It 

 has been remarked that we have no means of 

 finding out whether they be things at all or only 

 appearances of other things. But that does not 

 in any way lessen either the instruction or the 

 pleasure that they give us. We can divide and 

 sub-divide all our " somethings" till they be very 

 small by the line, and very light in the balance ; 

 and we can follow the operation mentally till we 

 lose them all on the verge of " nothing ;" and that 

 whether we trace backward the real succession in 

 nature, or imagine an artificial one of our own. 

 But they do not serve and please us the less on 

 that account; so neither is light, or the beau- 

 ties which light brings to reward our observation, 

 altered one jot in their power of pleasing, whether 

 the light be a substance spreading over them, 

 or merely an agency which calls their properties 

 so into action as that we can see the results. 



The sunbeam, when divided by passing a small 

 M 3 



