a gift, for the purpose of healing him. I soon afterwards possessed this foolish beast, who contributed as much to the amusement necessary to me on the return voyage to Egypt as the filial attention of my freed-man Hagar, from Mount Basa, whom my brother had received as a present, and bequeathed to me. My servants would not believe but that the monkey was a transformed Gabio (caravan guide), because he always preceded us, and on the right road, even in the desert; and availed himself of every stone and rock, to look about him, whereupon the birds of prey frequently drove him under the camels, to complain to me with his schin schin.' This complaint he also uttered when he had been beaten, in my absence, by the people whose merissa he had helped to drink, till he could not move from the spot, and committed all sorts of misdemeanours." As may be inferred from the above passage, much of the entertainment of the work is derived from Werne's companions in adventure, who were, of course, always with him, exposed to study and observation. Of the natives, on the other hand, though we discern sufficient to be well assured that they belonged to one of the most interesting varieties of the human species, we do not see nearly so much as we could desire. The very nature of the ground on the banks of the White Nile often rendered much familiarity impossible. The travellers ascended through a broad expanse of water, bordered on either side-first, by a margin of reeds and rushes, then by long strings of swamps, and next by lakes and ponds, which terminated at the foot of the dry land, where, of course, the natives were chiefly to be found. But what acted as a bar between the expedition and the natives often tended to impart a peculiar interest to the voyage. All persons in whom fancy and imagination predominate love to be surrounded by waters of indeterminate extent, especially in new countries, where every advance of a hundred yards may be regarded as a new discovery. Sometimes the sun rose and set, as at sea, without disclosing to the enterprising adventurers anything but lakes and submerged marshes, and the crimson glories from the east or west flamed upward from the horizon|| in one interminable quivering wake. On all sides, as far as the eye could reach, were forests of gigantic rushes, and reeds in flower, waving and trembling in the wind, while the surface of the Nile, and of all the lakes and ponds by which it was bordered, was covered with colours of every shade and hue-blue, pink, white, varied and variegated to infinity. Sometimes the solid ground jutted out towards the river in large pit-like promontories, on which the natives had established fishing villages, and where they had constructed weirs, and numerous other contrivances for entrapping fish. Here and there, where the banks were elevated and somewhat solid, the natives had erected their ordinary dwellings close to the stream, and there they pastured their flocks and herds -pursued the various processes of agriculture, and raised all the grain, fruits, and vegetables which they thought necessary to their comfortable subsistence. Life in such countries is easily supported. In the first place, there is no house-rent, and, as a matter of course, no taxes. No one dreads the approach of quarter-day, or of the appearance of the collector of poor-rates, || or water-rates, or income-tax; what people earn is their own, unless where, emerging from the primitive condition of the human race, people have begun to commit the sin of chiefship, or kingship, which they speedily find to be its own punishment. Up to this point the most Utopian equality and fraternity prevail, though the original instincts of human nature are there One fact connected with the distribution of beads through Africa, Werne does not appear to have become acquainted with. There are several Europeans—Italians, Poles, and Germans-settled in Cairo, who import beads in vast quantities from the west, and vend them upon a very peculiar principle. An Arab, with little or no capital, from some romantic notion, perhaps a desire to turn merchant, comes to one of the Frank dealers and lays his case before him. He declares that he has no money, but is very honest, and that if the Christian will trust him he will take a certain amount of goods, put them in a bundle upon his back, and go far away into the interior among tribes of pagans, with whose very names he is unacquainted, and there exchange them for gold or such other articles of merchandise as he may consider sufficiently portable. The Frank usually gives him credit. The Arab starts from Cairo, and, after an absence which often extends to one or two years, returns with a quantity of gold, ivory, or ostrich feathers-borne sometimes by slaves, whom he has likewise purchased for beads. At other times, for strings of glass baubles, he brings back strings of camels; but occasionally, also, it must be admitted, he leaves his bones on the sands of the desert, bleaching in the burning wind. This accounts, in part, for what Werne could not explain to himself, the presence of Venetian beads among tribes which would seem never to have been visited by Europeans, or even by regular trading moslem. But the bold pedlars of whom we have spoken set no limits to their wanderings, and would seem never to be ill-treated by the natives, whose persons they help so materially to adorn. Europeans would appear incapable of understanding the passion of the Africans, and other uncivilized races, for beads, which they regard as a mere ebullition of childish vanity. But is the rage for gold, diamonds, and other precious stones, by which we are possessed, at all more rational or respectable? A diamond is but a large hard bead, or a small hard bead, as the case ever, be called wars or battles. The animosity of may be; and gold bugles or bracelets are of no more these people to the Arabian hordes and marauding sysutility than rings of iron, such as the Shilluks, Keks, tem goes so far, for example, that when they take a Bandurials, and other wild tribes of Africans, wear upon | Bakhara prisoner, they put him to death with cudgels; their arms and ancles. The happiness of life consists death by the harta (spear) being considered too honin the number of pleasurable emotions which we are ourable. On the contrary, they do not kill the Deukers, able to compress into it; and, therefore, it is possible whom they merely take captive, because they consider that a naked Kek, or Shilluk, with a string of beads them as aborigines and old neighbours. The Arabs, about his neck, and a few streaks of red ochre instead however, do not slay the Shilluks taken prisoners by of a pair of breeches, may be much happier than a them, not so much out of respect to the Koran as from London or Parisian exquisite, in all his effeminate finery. their inherent selfishness. When the Bakharas come Nature reckons in these cases for very much. Where to the river to graze the cattle in the grass, which, the sun does instead of a great-coat, where the nightly || after the reeds have been burnt away, contains nourishheavens are your best canopy, where you need no fire ing fodder, there are continual petty wars between but to cook your dinner, boil your coffee, or light your the Shilluks and Bakharas, in which the latter dispipe, where your wife is born in sables, and where the play considerable bravery, as Suliman Kashef himself more children you have the better, happiness becomes admits." a cheap and accessible commodity-you obtain it without any effort of civilisation or philosophy. Nature unasked pours out her plenty around you, and assumes every form of beauty for your amusement. Sky and earth contend with each other which shall contribute most to your enjoyment. The cloudless firmament filled with golden light-the earth covered with trees and flowers, herds and flocks, and birds innumerable, stretches around you in boundless luxuriance. You consequently make no progress in the arts of life, because to live requires no Among the inhabitants of those climes Pope's Indian philosophy is realised: arts. "To be content's their natural desire; They ask no angel's wing, no seraph's fire." On the contrary, they bask in the beauty of mother earth, and are contented. In these races you unquestionably discover the germs of the old Egyptian philosophy aiming at eternal ease and serenity, and imparting to the countenance that expression of boundless self-satisfaction which we so much admire in the colos Spenser, in his "Faery Queen," delights in describing sunrises and sunsets, which he varies with singular invention and felicity. Neither he, however, nor any other poet, has ever imagined anything so truly grand and glorious as sunrise within the tropics. We have there beheld the sun rise and go down in a manner which seemed to make a heaven of earth. It is on these occasions that the poverty of language appears. Words, gorgeous and magnificent as they are, fail when they attempt to compete with the prolific grandeur of nature, which on such occasions gives rise to fancies and imaginings for which our most fertile vocabularies contain no name. Werne has worked up in his way a very fine picture of sunrise, which reminds us of a passage in Mr. Bayle St. John's Adventures in the Lybian Desert. "I looked upon the rising sun with a blissful heart and kindly humour that nature, in her majesty, calls forth with irresistible power. Dark brown clouds covered the place where he was to disclose himself in all his glory. The all-powerful light of the ocean. They become lighted up with an indescribable hue of the world inflames this layer of clouds-ruffled like the billows of blue-Tyrian purple-from which an internal living fire beam forth on every side. To S. E. by S., a vessel dips its masts and sails into this flood of gold. Silvery rays and flames of gold display themselves in the centre of that deep blue curtain, the borders of which only are kindled with luminous edging, whilst the core of the sun itself, within the most confined limits, sparkles through the darkest part, like a star never to be looked upon. he rises, conquering all the atmospheric obstacles of the vaporous earth, the latter, stained like clear flakes of gold, attending him on the right, whilst two strata of clouds, embedded in each other, draw a long beautiful train to the north, ever spreading, and dissolving more and more. I write, I try once more to embrace the mightiest picture of ethereal life, but the ship has in the meantime turned, and the sails cover the sun, so as to weaken the first impression. There are moments, truly, when one is, as At last sal statues, bassi-relievi, and paintings of Upper Egypt. We must not, however, lose sight of the fact, that no tribes of men, however remote and secluded may be the land they inhabit, are beyond the reach of war, which even here, on the banks of the white stream, makes its appearance from time to time in all its worst features of savageness and barbarity. "The Deukers," says Werne, "were seen at a distance jumping in the air, whilst they raised one arm and struck their shields with their spears. This appeared to me rather a challenge than an expression of joy, as I concluded from the war dance, the representation of which I had before witnessed. Their city is said to stretch far beyond this ridge, which the trees prevented us from remarking. Long swampy islands, with reeds and other plants entwined one with the other, extend from their country to the middle of the stream. This is the case also, though on a reduced scale, on the left side--the The curious points in Werne's work are so extremely distance of the shores from one to another is more scattered, that it would require infinite pains to collect than an hour, (three miles.) The reeds form in this and arrange them, so as to form a connected picture manner a protection, which, even when the water is at of the countries and people on the Bahr El Abiad, the highest, is not to be overcome-and at low water, Still, the facts are related, though without the slightthe Machadas form a complete defensive barrier. In the est regard to artistic treatment. In one place we same manner, the Shilluks on the left shore have a have a sketch of elephants, giraffes, and ostriches, movmarsh of reeds under water for protection. The Turks ing like living mountains along the skirts of the forest; have managed, however, to come at these two nations elsewhere we behold vast herds of hippopotami, snorting, by land. Suliman Kashef himself has twice defeated blowing, and splashing in the river; and anon, we find the Shilluks on the boundary of his district. These the Arabs looking forth from their vessels upon the dark sudden and crafty attacks of a Chusnce cannot, how-natives, and transforming them, by the force of imagi were, a god; but this god-like feeling lasts in its entire strength only as long as the external impression, which the inmost persuasion rather weakens than strengthens." nation, into cannibals. On board the dahabies them-] selves, strange scenes were often enacted, displaying the fierce, irregular passions by which the natives of the East are chiefly, perhaps, distinguished. Sometimes we found Suliman Kashef, watching like a tiger the fair Georgian slave, whom he kept so close a prisoner|| in his cabin that she was only once seen during the whole expedition. Then Abd el Abiad comes before us flogging a negress almost to death. Afterwards, these displays of jealousy and cruelty are exchanged for uproarious mirth, occasioned by the rude witticisms of those jesters whom the Turks delight to carry everywhere about with them. Meanwhile, the few Europeans who accompany these semi-barbarians amused themselves as best they could, in their own way; but, generally, their merriest moments were damped by the recollection of far happier days at home, it being seldom that a Frank can enter heartily into the pleasures of the Orientals. This may be inferred from the way in which Werne speaks of the celebration of New Year's Eve : "It occurred to me that it was Sylvester's day, and brought|| before my wretched view the different Sylvester nights-how I had sometimes passed them joyfully, sometimes melancholy or quietly, ever according to the circumstances and situations in which I was placed at the time. I shouted to Thibaut, who was just passing by me, that it was Sylvester's day, that we ought to keep the anniversary of our honest patron as a festival, and invited him to my vessel. He was afraid, however, of Jedzulle, who reclined upon his carpet on deck, resting from his tailoring, and had one jinjan (small cup) of date brandy after another handed to him, as if he wanted to solemnise Sylvester's evening in his own way; I went down, therefore, to Thibaut. We drank Maraschino and grog, having a coal dish between us over the fire, on which we laid green brushwood, to protect us in some measure from the impudent gnats. We related anecdotes of our previous journeys in Greece, and how we, being then young, looked at the world with perfectly different eyes, and had now become old fellows, whose highest destiny would be to get an old maid or widow for a wife on our return to our native country: and how we had lost the socalled happiness when it was thrown in our way. We now approach that rocky barrier in the white stream beyond which Selim Capitan and Suliman Kashef either could not or would not ascend. Werne, with illiberality too common among Frauks, imputes to cowardice what was rather the suggestion of prudence. Indeed, he assigns reasons for their return sufficiently strong to satisfy any reasonable person. Foremost among these was the shortness of their provisions, which, independently of any other, would have been quite enough. But when we add to this that the water was rapidly sinking in the river, and that, had they ascended the Rocky Pass, they would not possibly have forced their way back again, we must rather appland the wisdom of Selim and Suliman, than join in the unjust sarcasm of the traveller. It is easy to display bravery at home, when the danger is over; but still Werne has not been able to conceal that he was himself quite as much alarmed as any of his companions by the warlike demonstrations of the natives : "The war-dance which the blacks performed yesterday has contributed, certainly, to the final determination to return. Even I thought, yesterday, that I heard and saw in the fearful battlesong a declaration of war, and a challenge to the contest. It was impossible to persuade oneself that it was merely a mark of hon The natives marched up and down the island in columns, brandishing their lances in the air, sang their war-songs with threatening countenances and dreadful gestures, then fell into still greater ecstasy, ran up and down, and roared their martial chant." onr. "It was the middle of the day, about two o'clock, when Selim Capitan, in order to take his leave and to employ the dreaded people at the moment of our departure, and keep them far from us, threw ten cups of beads on shore, and the cannons on all the vessels were discharged, to bid solemn farewell with twenty-one shots to the beautiful country, which must contain so many more interesting materials." "It was 8 o'clock when I summoned my dahabie to come close; but, as if the devil had seized the helm, it went the very same moment bang against the vessel in which the Frenchmen were. A Thus we see the sources of the White Nile still remain fearful row and mutual abuse then took place, especially as all the vessels were thrown together by the wind and the current as much a mystery as ever; though it was ascertained into the corner where the river makes a sudden bend from south by this expedition that the Mountains of the Moon to south-west. It was only with much trouble that we worked have a real existence, and are not fabulous as some ourselves loose with oars, poles, and sails, to stop about north-geographers are inclined to suppose. But in what west, with the north-east wind. At sunset we cast anchor. Welcome, new year! Oh ye beautiful past times! Dance, and the girls; wine, and friends! I could not sleep; the sentinels sang, and told stories of spirits, snakes, and unbelievers, accompanied by abuse of the gnats. I thought of my brother in Taka, who, at the present moment, did not even know it was Sylvester's evening, for there we had lost the computation of time, both having different dates in our journals. This was also the case with the Italian physician, Dr. Bellath, who took the greatest delight, however, in the new moon, because the arrears of his salary in creased with it. It occurred to me that my brother and I, when we had nearly lost our memory after a severe illness, had even contended about the date of the year. Midnight had long passed, and I was just on the point of falling asleep, when Thibaut, who had continued his libations in honour of St. Sylvester, shouted out, A happy new year to you!" degree of latitude, north or south, the White Stream takes its rise, must be left to be determined by future travellers. Mahomed Ali will probably make no more expeditions, and it is probable that no future Egyptian Pasha will display greater enterprise. Probably, therefore, the world will have to wait till some single individual like Bruce arises with courage and capacity sufficient to subdue the opposition of the aborigines, and the obstacles interposed by nature. In his descent of the river, Werne adds considerably to the information he acquired in ascending; but for this we must refer the reader to the work itself, which, upon the whole, is lively and amusing. BOTANICAL SCIENCE.* "Blessed be God, for flowers! That breathe From out their odorous beauty, Of sunshine on life's hours." Professor Balfour, whose engagement on a Botanical Manual was noticed in a recent number of this journal, with the prediction that he would produce one calculated to take rank as the text-book of the science, has reasoned the cause, moreover, very cogently, in the work in which he has amply verified this prediction. He has said :— THE love of plants and flowers having been es- || refreshed, amidst the treasures which Flora strews tablished by the universal consent of novelists as a upon his path-why, then-he may be led to crytest of amiability in heroes and heroines, and all such interesting persons, there is no denying that "a little scientific knowledge" of these objects of many a gentle passion, might be superadded without the danger implied in the hackneyed line of the satirical bard of Twickenham. To botanical science, indeed, we are indebted for by far the larger half of the true beauties of plants-an accurate comprehension of their external forms, their structure, functions, relations, and uses; so true is it, that many a flower is born to blush unseen.". Invisible to the eye of the ordinary observer are all those marvellous configurations in which, in obedience to uniform laws, the lilies of the field array themselves, when decked in a glory superior to the magnificence of Solomon, with all his splendour. It is the microscopic research of scientific examination that develops the still more secret structural beauty and order of the plant, and the harmony and proportion of its connections. Philosophising on these discoveries and observations, beauties more intellectual still become developed, as function as well as structure becomes clearly understood. And thus utility, in the end, steps in to appropriate the labours of the botanist, and to apply to the useful purposes of man those truths which he has eli cited from research. "The botanist, in accomplishing the ends he has in view, takes an enlarged and comprehensive view of the vegetation with which the earth is clothed. He considers the varied aspects under which plants appear in the various quarters of the globe, from the lichen on the Alpine summits, or on the coral reef, to the majestic palms, the bananas and boababs of tropical climes-from the minute aquatics of our northern pools to the gigantic Victoria of the South American waters-from the parasite fungus, only visible by the aid of the microscope, to the enormous parasite discovered by Raffles in the Indian Archipelago. foundation for the denizens of the wood; and thus, in the pro gress of time, the sterile rock presents all the varieties of meadow, thicket, and forest. "It is interesting to trace the relation which these plants bear to each other, and the mode in which they are adapted to dif ferent climates and situations. The lichens are propagated by spores (seeds) so minute as to appear like thin dust, and to be so easily carried by the wind that we can scarcely conceive any place which they cannot reach. They are the first occupants of the sterile rock and the coral-formed island, being fitted to derive The minute and apparently crepuscular studies the greater part of their nourishment from the atmosphere and to which botany directs us may influence minds the moisture suspended in it. By degrees they act on the rocks to which they are attached, and cause their disintegration. By impatient of detail, and accustomed to a wider their decay a portion of vegetable mould is formed, and in prorange of speculation, to repudiate the value and atcess of time a sufficient quantity of soil is produced to serve for tractions of the science. But a botanical excursion the germination of the seeds of higher plants. In this way the would set the most resolute opponent of this entic-coral island is in the course of years covered with a forest of Thus it is that the most despised weeds lay the ing study all right. Let him join a party of from cocoa-nut trees. 60 to 150-such being the muster of the Edinburgh botanical class-and follow the professor, in his expositions through the woods of Arniston, or the Hermitage of Braid. The riches of the tin case, which he throws from his aching shoulders at evening, properly appreciated, would beggar a day's diggings on the San Joacquin or Sacramento. If his conscience do not prick him, for having, with his ruthless trowel, utterly exterminated some rare plant in its habitat, he will resign himself to his pillow for a sound sleep, purchased by pure fatigue and pure enjoyment, with a zest which, since the racy days of boyhood, the happiest of men had coveted and not enjoyed. Or suppose that, strong in athletic manhood, and caught by a passing fit of botanical enthusiasm, he sallies forth, like George Don, the Forfar watchmaker's apprentice, alone, with his knapsack, amidst the innermost recesses of his native Grampians-that, in the pursuit of natural objects, he is oblivious alike of fatigue and privation-frequently, or for weeks together, bivouacking, when the night falls, under shelter of the nearest rock, and, rising with the sun, to revelll "The Creator has distributed his floral gifts over every part of the world from the poles to the equator. Every clime has its peculiar vegetation, and the surface of the earth may be divided into regions characterised by certain predominating tribes of plants. The same thing takes place on the lofty mountains of warm climates, which may be said to present an epitome of the horizontal distribution of plants. Again, if we descend into the bowels of the earth, we find the traces of vegetation-a vegetation, however, which flourished at distant epochs of the earth's history, plants which are met with in different strata. By the labours of Brongniart in particular these fossil remains have been rendered available for the purposes of science. Many points have been determined relative to their structure as well as in regard to the climate and soil in which they grew, and much aid has been afforded to the geologist in his investigations. and the traces of which are seen in the coal, and in the fossil "The bearings which botany has on zoology are seen when we consider the lowest tribe of plants, such as Diatomaceæ. These bear a striking resemblance to the lowest animal, and have been The observations of figured as such by Ehrenberg and others. Thwaites on Conjugation have confirmed the view of the vegetable nature of many of these bodies. There appear, however, to be many productions which occupy a sort of intermediate territory between the animal and vegetable kingdom, and for the time being the botanist and zoologist must consent to joint occupancy. * A Manual of Botany; being an introduction to the study of the structure, physiology, and classification of plants. By John Hatton Balfour, M.D., &c., Professor of Medicine and Botany in the University of Edinburgh. Griffin and Co., London and Glasgow. 1849. "The application of botanical science to agriculture and horticulture has of late attracted much attention, and the chemistry of plants has been carefully examined by Licbig, Mulder, and Johnston. The consideration of the phenomena connected with germination, and the nutrition of plants, has led to important conclusions as to sowing, draining, ploughing, the rotation of crops, and the use of manures. "The relation which botany bears to medicine has often been misunderstood. The medical student is apt to suppose that all he is to acquire by his botanical pursuits is a knowledge of the names and orders of medical plants. The object of the connection between scientific and mere professional studies is here lost sight of. It ought ever to be borne in mind by the medical man that the use of the collateral sciences, as they are termed, is not only to give him a great amount of general information, which will be of value to him in his after career, but to train his mind to that kind of research which is essential to the student of medicine, and to impart to it a tone and a vigour which will be of the highest moment in all his future investigations. What can be more necessary for a medical man than the power of making accurate observations and diagnoses? These are the qualities which are brought into constant exercise in the prosecution of the botanical investigations to which the student ought to turn his attention as preliminary to the study of practical medicine. In the prosecution of his physiological researches, it is of the highest importance that the medical man should be conversant with the phenomena exhibited by plants; for no one can be reckoned a scientific physiologist who does not embrace within the range of his inquiries all classes of animated beings; and the more extended his views, the more certain and compre hensive will be his generalisation. "To those who prosecute science for amusement, botany presents many points of interest and attraction. Though relating to living and organised beings, the prosecution of it calls for no painful experiments, no forbidding dissections. It adds pleasure to every walk, and affords an endless source of gratification, which can be rendered available alike in the closet and in the field. The prosecution of it combines healthful and spiritstirring recreation with scientific study, and its votaries are united by associations of no ordinary kind. He who has visited the Scottish Highlands with a botanical party knows well the feelings of delight connected with such a ramble-feelings by no means of an evanescent nature, but lasting during life, and at once recalled by the sight of the specimens which were collected. These apparently insignificant remnants of vegetation recall many a tale of adventure, and are associated with the delightful recollec tion of many a friend. It is not, indeed, a matter of surprise to Highland botany, as to throw a comparative shade over the vegetation of the plains." Such are the claims, attractions, and pleasures of botany, as set forth by one of its most zealous advocates-the hero of the battle of Glentiltwhose spirit, we rejoice to think, is still bent on exploring the mountains, in despite of ducal resist ance and all the gillies in the tail of the chief of Athol, when or wherever the said chief may choose to clap on the appendage in question. His present work is an illustration at large of the admonition he has more especially addressed to the medical student, not to limit the pursuit of botany to a knowledge of names and orders. Although termed on its bastard title, "An Introduction to the study of the structure, physiology, and classification of plants," it carries the system onwards to those ultimate results which would render any one, who should make himself master of its contents, no mean adept in this delightful science. We chiefly refer, however, to the first part of the work, devoted to an elaborate summary of Vegetable Anatomy, Organography, and Physiology, as characteristic of the point of perfection to which botanic knowledge has attained. The second, and less remarkable part of this admirable compendium, is an elaborate but condensed synopsis of Systematic Botany, Taxonomy, or the classification of plants-freed from all the confusing coxcombry of Lindley, in varying the accepted nomenclature, and thus confusing the study of plants. The manual of Professor Balfour is modelled on the celebrated works of Jussieu and Henfrey, adopting the system of De Candolle, but following Walker Arnott in the arrangement and definition of the natural orders. The most novel and agreeable portion of its contents is the constant notice which has been introduced of the medical and economical properties of plants, on the unimpeachable authority of Christison, Royle, Burnett, and Lindley. And when we add that nearly 1,000 of the most beautiful woodcuts of "Jussieu's Cours Elementaire," "Beudant's Geology," and the works of Raspail, St. Hilaire, Schleiden, Amici, and Maout are employed in the illustration of the text, we believe that we certify to the unwonted value of the information contained in this epitome. It would be no easy, however agreeable, task following the learned author through that portion of the work which we have already more especially commended as unfolding the minute wonders of vegetable structure, and illustrating the extent of modern attainments in the science. But the literary journalist would hardly keep pace with the that those who have lived and walked for weeks together in a Highland ramble, who have met in sunshine and in tempest, who have climbed together the misty summits, and have slept in the miserable shieling, should have such scenes indelibly impressed on their memory. There is, moreover, something peculiarly attractive in the collecting of Alpine plants. Their comparative rarity, the localities in which they grow, and frequently their beautiful hues, conspire in shedding around them a halo of interest far exceeding that connected with Lowland productions. The Alpine veronica, displaying its lovely blue corolla on the verge of dissolving snows; the forget-me-not of the mountain summit, whose tints far excel those of its namesake of the brooks; the woodsia, with its tufted fronds, adorning the clefts of the rocks; the snowy gentian, concealing its eye of blue in the ledges of the steep crags; the Alpine astragalus, enlivening the turf with its purple clusters; the lychnis, choosing the stony and dry knoll for the evolution of its pink petals; the sonchus, raising its stately stalk and azure head in spots, which try the enthusiasm of the adventurous col-age did he hesitate to gather flowers, and anatolector; the pale-flowered oxytropis, confining itself to a single British cliff; the azalea, forming a carpet of the richest crimson; the saxifrages, with their white, yellow, and pink blossoms, clothing the sides of the streams; the saussurea and erigeron, crowning the rocks with their purple and pink capitula; the pendant cinquefoil, blending its yellow flower with the white of the Alpine cerastiums and the bright blue of the stony veronica; the stemless silene, giving a pink and velvety covering to the decomposing granite; the yellow hieracia, whose varied transition forms have been such a fertile cause of dispute amongst botanists; the slender and delicate grasses, the chickweed, the carices, and the rushes which spring up on the moist Alpine summits; the graceful ferns; the tiny mosses, with their urn-like thecæ; the crustaceous dry lichens, with their spore-bearing apothecia; all these add such a charm mise them, too, upon occasion, with the botanist. Still more |