464 POPULAR BOTANY. 
tiny conferva. In the diminutive space of the petal of a flower we often 
find the most beautiful, brilliant, and contrasting hues and most remark- 
able and regular designs. What immense diversity of odour and flavour 
we find in plants, and the different effects produced by them on 
their parts ! Take, for instance, the fragrance of the rose, the heliotrope 
and the orange blossom ; how delightful, yet how widely different ! 
And how great are the contrasts in the different parts of the last named 
plant. The flower, so delightfully sweet, so different from the smell and 
taste of the orange-peel, and the refreshing juice, or the bitter taste of 
the kernels ! And yet all these widely different tastes and properties 
have been imparted to it through the narrow tube of the fruit-stalk. 
We behold the bitter vermouth in company with the sweet sugar-cane, 
and the most useful medicinal herb growing peacefully at the side of 
the most rank and poisonous plants. 
If we examine the seeds from which the different plants have 
sprung, and the earth on which they have grown, we shall be unable 
to find the least clue to either the difference in taste or smell of 
any of the plants. Where shall we seek the power that endows the tiny 
embryo with life, and causes it to grow ? Where seek the laws that so 
strictly govern and direct them to assume their respective shapes and 
to perform the different functions which all individuals are required to 
fulfil? Where is the power which propels the sap from the roots 
of the trees up to its very top ? Where, lastly, shall w T e seek the 
laboratory wherein the crude liquid of the earth is transformed into 
so many different products of such diversity of colour, taste, flavour and 
properties ? Can we do better than call this a miracle ; and is this 
miracle perhaps less greater because we see it repeated daily before our 
eyes ? 
Referring, lastly, to the practical advantages for wdiich we are in- 
debted to the vegetable kingdom, for our daily bread we are dependent 
on the seeds of certain grasses or on some roots. The indispensable 
daily vegetables come to us in the shape of roots, tubercles, stems, 
leaves, fruits and seeds. Our fruit trees furnish us with apples, pears, 
peaches, apricots, quinces, plums, cherries, grapes, raspberries, currants, 
gooseberries, strawberries, and many others, which are frequently used 
in the natural raw state, or will be dried, preserved, prepared into con- 
fection, jelly, syrups, or wines, cider, beer, vinegar and distilled spirits. 
The almonds, nuts, hazel, chestnut, pistachio-nuts and many others 
serve us as a welcome dessert. 
Furthermore, there are coffee, rice, tea, sugar; all our precious 
spices ; the greatest part of our dyestuffs, as indigo, logwood, sandalwood, 
camphor, tobacco, a great number of the most effective drugs ; most of the 
fatty and essential oils, resins, gums, india-rubber, honey, wax, potash, 
and a thousand other articles of vegetable origin. Nor should we forget 
that cotton, flax, hemp, jute, and similar fibres, provide us with ropes 
