BOTANY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 129 



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every season. By accident, a pot with young 

 cuttings, was mislaid and forgotten in the Kew 

 Garden, and had no water given it, it was there- 

 by reduced to its healthy aridity, and every ex- 

 tremity produced a flower. 



There is another plant belonging to the same 

 place, the Brosimum, whose powers of enduring 

 heat and dryness are still more extraordinary. 

 When the grass dies and the soil cracks into 

 chasms, and is baked into brick by that sun 

 whose face is never obscured by a single cloud, 

 it is then Nature comes to the aid of the sear 

 and parched earth by giving this plant, whose 

 leaves, as a writer remarked, have the property 

 to multiply under the flowers of the sky, as others 

 have to grow in the dew. The more burning 

 the sky, and the more arid the earth, the more 

 vigorously its leaves unfold. Under its abund- 

 ant foliage, both man and cattle find shade and 

 food ; its grateful fruit gratifying the one, and 

 its healthful pasturage supplying the other. 



L. I have heard it remarked, that in temper- 

 ate climate the leaves of trees are apart from 

 each other and light, so as to allow the sun to 

 shine on the flowers arid trunk, but under a 

 torrid zone they are broad, thick, and firm, serv 



