If we would learn to pray we must first learn to feel. We must have our hearts deeply impressed with a sense of God's presence. We must examine well the words we utter, and be quite assured we mean them. We are not required to be always on our knees, or always in the act of prayer. But if there is sincerity in our devotion, we must habitually desire what in our stated prayers we ask; habitually mean what we there profess; and have our God so far always in our thoughts, that in every moment of need our minds will recur to him as our best. resource, our surest counsellor and friend. If there were in our hearts an abiding sense, a real persuasion that all we have is of God,-that all we desire must be sought of him, there would be a constant and habitual disposition to prayer. In every moment of distress, the thoughts would rise up to him for aid-in every moment of hesitation, for guidance to the right. With every impulse of pleaure there would come a throb of gratitude-with every sense of sin, a sigh for pardon. Many a prayer is heard in heaven, and accepted there, that never was formed into expression upon earth; but stole silently from the bosom of the Christian amid the ordinary occupation of the day. And welcome to such a bosom will come the hour particularly set apart for prayer; for it is the time to ask what through the day we have desired, to express what through the day we have not ceased to feel.

If the subject of our prayers be one we have been endeavouring to forget, the moment that recalls it can scarcely be desired. But if it be really that we delight in, though in the hurried occupations of the day we have too much forgotten it, feelings of pleasure will welcome the return. On our sincerity must rest the reality of our prayer.

Pausing, then, to reflect on the thoughtlessness and carelessness of our devotions past, if our conscience testify that such they have been, we shall do well most closely to examine the prayers we have been accustomed,

ΤΟ

THE STUDY

STUDY OF NATURE

BOTANY.

THERE is nothing, perhaps, so much tendin press the minds of young persons with the great goodness of God, as the study, the minute and study of his works. Natural History in all its is too little thought of in education. Extreme ig in things the most common and simple, things day interest, is the result. We not seldom m persons highly educated, who seem scarcely to k fruit of a vegetable from its flower, or the disting of either. We take the flowers for our bosom, fruit for our table, without one thought of the manner in which they are formed and matured contrivances by which they are so infinitely vari of the hand so gracious, so considerate of our pl that has bestowed them on us. It is little inde he thoughtless and the ignorant know of the wo creation. They see its larger features becau cannot avoid it. They admire the moon that gli

the water, and the tints that paint the landscape-and even in things so obvious, there is indeed enough to fill our minds with gratitude and wonder. But when in the obscurest flower that hides itself in the herbage, in the insect too minute for human observation, in the mineral that lies buried for ages in the bosom of the earth, we find properties so curious, proportions so exact, and beauties so unnumbered, we do indeed learn to be amazed at the goodness that has wasted so much bounty on creatures so heedless, and so little grateful. Our idea of the power of God increases, and of his wisdom that could thus exactly suit every thing to the purpose for which it is intended. Every flower we gather speaks to us of the God who made it, and every fly that settles on it, brings us a message of his love. This ought to be the effect of our studies. If it is not, our knowledge of natural objects may embellish our conversation, and amuse our vacant hours, but will make us neither better nor happier; since it fails of its best and only important object-that of turning our thoughts towards our Maker, and teaching us to love him more, and serve him

better.

It is with this view, and to open to young persons the inexhaustible store of amusement the fields and the hedges may afford them, we propose to give a brief and simple treatise on the construction of vegetables, and the progress of vegetation, with an introduction to the study of Botany in general, illustrated with drawings of different flowers: hoping that we may thus induce them, by an easy commencement, to go on to works of more depth and science, to which we shall refer them.

OF THE PROGRESS OF VEGETATION AND ITS, DECAY.

Every substance with which we are acquainted, is formed of elements, or simple bodies, that being combined or united together in different ways, form the infinite variety of objects which surround us. These