284 



THE AMBRICAK" 



oval ill outline, with several short, stiff, prickly 

 teeth scattered on the edge. Close around the 

 stem and among the leaves are five or six dull 

 red berries, about the size of peas. 



The Holly is a small tree growing near the 

 seacoast from Maine to Florida; not common, 

 however, to the North. It attains a height of 

 from twenty to forty feet. Our botanical works 

 do not mention the occurrence of the tree so far 

 from the seacoast as the specimen from Vicks- 

 burg. Oui tiee closeh lesembles the European 

 Ilolh, but difleis in '!C\eial particulars: the 



)>* 



llollj {Ilix aquafolium, L.) 



leaves are not so wavy in outline, less glossy, 

 and the berries of a darker color. We have a 

 specimen from Florida, in which the leaves are 

 smaller, obovate or almost wedge form, and 

 with teeth only near the summit. 



In an article recently published in the Journal 

 of Agriculture ou the Holly, the writer, Mr. J. 

 Parish Stelle, assumes that the Holly of the Gulf 

 States and the Mississippi Valley is the Ilex 

 aquifolium, L., identical with the European 

 tree, and tliat it differs from the Holly of the 

 Atlantic coast. This is a question wliich must 

 be decided by careful observation, and tlie pre- 

 paration of good botanical specimens. We com- 

 mend tliis work to the attention of our botanical 

 friends in the South. 



Sometimes an inch of water falls in a day, 

 or even in a single shower. This is equivalent 

 to about three hundred and sixty hogsheads to | 

 the acre. I 



THE LEAP AS A WORKER— No. 2. 



But if we regard the leaf only as a drawer of 

 water, a lifter of earthy matter, a carrier of 

 lightning, a gatherer of nourishing gases, a de- 

 fense against zymotic diseases, we give it an 

 inferior place — it is only a humble, common 

 laborer. Man might invent and apply machinery 

 to pump the water and evaporate it ; he can 

 enrich the soil, can put on his roof metallic con- 

 ductors, and can escape epidemic diseases if he 

 will breathe ^jJM'e «(>. "Ah! there's the rub I" 

 for he can get pure air only as the leaf prepares 

 it for him. Man can, in a measure, do the work 

 of the leaf, but science has tailed to demonstrate 

 a way to do the chemical work that the leaf 

 does. 



The leaf is not a common laborer, then ; for, 

 though it deigns to do this drudgery, its great 

 field of labor is elsewhere. It is an analytical 

 chemist of the noblest order, and, as such, per- 

 forms labor that Liebig, and Fresenius, and 

 IJegnault, attempted in vain, and such as no 

 chemist can ever perform. Here it is that the 

 leaf asserts its superiority as a worker — becomes 

 a right royal laborer. Here it uses the same 

 re-agents that man is permitted to use, but with 

 which he cannot succeed. And so the leaf looks 

 down upon the great and learned chemist, and 

 regards him as a bungler. Every exhaled 

 breath of man, and of every animal on the face 

 of the globe, is loaded with poison. The pro- 

 duct of combustion, whether arising from the 

 cheerful home fire, from the fire-box of the 

 locomotive, from the furnace of the factory, or 

 belching forth in terrible profusion from the 

 yawning crater of the volcano, is pregnant with 

 the same life-destroying agent. Millions of 

 cubic feet of this dread destroyer, one foot of 

 which is suflicient to produce death, is being set 

 free every second of time. It is escaping from 

 your lungs every four seconds. But be not 

 frightened— no harm can come to you ; for God 

 has ordained the leaf as his agent to care for 

 you — to disarm this deadly foe of its terrors — 

 to seize upon it, anatomize it, take to itself a 

 part, and give up the remainder as the life-giving 

 air of heaven I 



And what is the measure of its force — what is 

 the sum of its acting energies? I can only tell 

 you what is its equivalent. I can give you the 

 exact measure of its strength, and at your longest 

 leisure you can reduce it to the ordinary stand- 

 ard of mechanical force, and determine the 

 measure in horse-power. How much mechani- 



