BALSAM. 



The Yellow Balsam has been found at Fountain's Abbey, 

 Yorkshire ; in Westmoreland, and in Surrey, but rarely ; 

 it is an annual, blooming in the hot months of July and 

 August. The flowers, and especially the capsules, merit 

 close inspection. When ripe, the seed-vessels, if touched 

 however lightly, instantaneously separate at the base and 

 curl backward, jerking the seeds to a considerable distance, 

 whence it has acquired the common name of Touch-me- 

 not. Darwin thus notices this peculiarity : — 



" With fierce distracted eye Impatiens stands, 

 Swells her pale cheeks and brandishes her hands ; 

 With rage and hate the astonished groves alarms, 

 And hurls her infants from her frantic arms." 



Impatience is a very common and ruinous folly. A writer 

 in the popular serial, St. Paul's, says, "the greatest of all 

 waste of time is hurry. Impatience is the robber of time ; 

 whereas procrastination, as we know by the copybooks, is 

 a mild and gentle thing, whose petty larcenies are ac- 

 companied by no violence. Impatience is always rushing 

 headlong into tangled and thorny thickets to explore some 

 promising and picturesque short-cut to nowhere. Impatience 

 is always on the point of finding a fool's paradise in a 

 mare's nest. Impatience goes on from failure to failure, 

 attempting to make silk purses out of sows' ears. Impatience 

 keeps tossing over new acquaintances in a perpetually dis- 

 appointed rapture of anticipation of ideal perfection ; like 

 some insane bee buzzing about in search of a flower which 

 should be entirely constructed of white wax and clarified 

 honey." 



