The Epidendra, Aerides, and many others of the epiphytic species (for they are not truly parasites), are 
familiarly known as air-plants. They absorb much of their food from the atmosphere, and hence require 
very little either soil or water; so that when taken from the trees on which they grow, just before their 
flowers are developed, and suspended by strings from the ceiling of a room, they will live for weeks, and 
even months, supported solely by the moisture floating in the atmosphere, and go on blossoming luxuriantly ; 
hence they are some of the most favorite and elegant ornaments of the houses in China and Japan. 
“Field Paths (says Mr. Howitt, Book of the Seasons, p. 198) are at this season particularly attractive. 
I love our real old English footpaths. I love those rustic and picturesque stiles opening their pleasant 
escapes from frequented places and dusty highways into the solitudes of Nature. It is delightful to catch a 
glimpse of one on the old village-green; under the old elder-tree by some ancient cottage, or half hidden by 
the overhanging boughs of a wood. I love to see the smooth, dry track, winding away in easy curves, along 
some green slope to the churchyard — to the forest grange — or to the embowered cottage. It is to me an 
object of certain inspiration. It seems to invite one from noise and publicity into the heart of solitude and 
of rural delight. It beckons the imagination on through green and whispering corn-fields, through the short 
but verdant pasture, the flowering mowing-grass, the odorous and sunny hay-field, the festivity of harvest ; 
from lonely farm to farm, from village to village; by clear and mossy wells; by tinkling brooks' and deep 
wood-skirted streams, to crofts where the daffodil is rejoicing in spring, or meadows where the large blue 
geranium embellishes the summer wayside ; to heaths with their warm elastic sward and crimson bells — the 
chithering of grasshoppers, — the foxglove, and the old gnarled oak ; in short, to all the solitary haunts after 
which the city-pent lover of nature pants ‘ as the hart panteth after the water-brooks. 5 What is there so 
truly English ? What is so truly linked with our rural tastes, our sweetest memories, and our sweetest 
poetry, as stiles and footpaths ? Goldsmith, Thomson, and Milton, have adorned them with some of their 
richest wreaths. They have consecrated them to poetry and love. It is along the footpath in secluded 
fields, upon the stile in the embowered lane, where the wild rose and the honeysuckle are lavishing their 
beauty and their fragrance, that we delight to picture to ourselves rural lovers breathing, in the dewy sweet- 
ness of summer evening, vows still sweeter. There it is that the poet, seated, sends back his soul into the 
freshness of his youth, amongst attachments since withered by neglect, — rendered painful by absence, or 
broken by death ; amongst dreams and aspirations which, even now that they pronounce their own fallacy, 
are lovely. It is there that he gazes upon the gorgeous sunset — the evening star following with its silvery 
lamp the fading day, or the moon showering her pale lustre through the balmy night air — with a fancy that 
kindles and soars into the heavens before him ; there, that we have all felt the charm of woods and green 
fields, and solitary boughs waving in the golden sunshine, or darkening in the melancholy beauty of evening 
shadows. Who has not thought how beautiful was the sight of a village congregation, pouring out from 
their old grey church on a summer day, and streaming off through the quiet meadows, in all directions, to 
their homes ? Or who that has visited Alpine scenery, has not beheld with a poetic feeling the mountaineers 
come winding down out of their romantic seclusions on a Sabbath morning, pacing the solitary heath-tracks, 
bounding with elastic step down the fern-clad dells, or along the course of a riotous stream, as cheerful, as 
picturesque, and yet as solemn as the scenes around them ? 
“ Those good old turnstiles, too — can I ever forget them ? the hours I have spun round upon them when 
a boy 1 or those in which I have almost laughed myself to death at the remembrance of my village pedagogue’s 
disaster ! Methinks I see him now ! — the time a sultry day, — the domins a goodly person of some eighteen 
or twenty stone, — the scene, a footpath sentinelled with turnstiles, one of which held him fast as in amaze- 
ment at his bulk. Never shall I forget his efforts and agonies to extricate himself, nor his lion-like roars 
which brought some labourers to his assistance, who, when they had recovered from their convulsions of 
laughter, knocked off the top of the turnstile and let him go. It is long since I saw a stile of this construc- 
tion, and I suspect the Falstaffs have cried them down. But without a jest, stiles and footpaths are vanish- 
ing everywhere. There is nothing upon which the advance of wealth and population has made so serious 
an inroad.” 
