GLIMPSES INTO PLANT-LIFE. 
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inches high. By a supreme effort it produced a crop of tiny 
cones and then — we feel so sorry for it ! — died from drought and 
starvation. There are thirteen other chapters all in the same 
simple, lucid style, wonderfully free from technicalities and yet 
wonderfully scientific. In these, roots, stems, leaves, buds, 
flowers, fruit, and seed are successively introduced, and there 
are also chapters in pollination, fertilization, seed dispersion, 
germination, physiology, insectivorous plants and habit of growth. 
Mrs. Brightwen, so to speak, takes us by the hand and shows 
OAK IN WINTER. 
us the actual thing, often driving facts home by personal 
examples. She is telling us about air-roots, and we understand 
at once why she misnames the Aroid House at Kew', spelling it 
Aeroid. It is the wonderful air-root she is thinking of, not the 
family of monocotyledons, and the lapse becomes a mnemonic. 
Perhaps the most suggestive chapter is the one on tree stems, 
where a walk through a wood on a February day proves full 
of interest. For the sap is beginning to rise in the trees, and 
the wood is sw'elling ; the hard, inelastic bark is splitting and 
cracking, and the clean new bark within stands out in bright 
contrast with the dull grey of the rest of the trunk. We see, 
too, that in no two trees is the character of the bark the same, 
and with a little practice we shall come to recognize the different 
species as easily in winter as when they have put on their 
full summer dress. The chapter on physiology, generally a 
