230 
NATURE NOTES. 
new and startling theories ; yet she never irritates by insisting 
on the obvious, and no trace of self-consciousness mars our 
pleasure in reading her essays. Would that all “ popular ” writers 
on natural history would imitate her in these characteristics ! 
This little book is just what it professes to be — an easy guide 
for boys and girls to the study of botany. And it starts at the 
right place, among the living growing plants. The author 
begins, not with definitions and terms — these come at the end of 
YOUNG SCOTCH FIR GROWING IN IlOUSE-LEEK. 
the book — but with a chapter entitled “ Adaptation,” full of inter- 
esting facts, most of them matters of common observation, which 
go to prove what a very living thing a plant is, and “ how 
persistently under all hindrances and difficulties it will endeavour 
to carry out the purpose of its creation.” The remark quoted 
is apropos of a Scotch fir, which got sown in a lump of house-leek 
on the top of a garden wall, and struggled on for eight years 
until it became a symmetrical well-branched tree, almost twelve 
