the whole vegetative economy is languishing? Yes, even then it becomes, if possible, an object of deeper admiration! Why do the flowers lose their beauty, the petals detach themselves and fall, the stamens experience the same degradation, the stigmas and styles of the pistils disappear equally with the other parts? It is because these parts have done the work which was assigned them by nature; and also, for this reason, a new vitality has now been established in the impregnated parts to their detriment. Take, as an example, the forming pod of the common garden pea, which everybody knows makes its appearance after the flowers have faded and fallen. That pod is the ovary of a pistil. The calyx will be found at the bottom of that pod, and at its top the remains of the style and stigma. Its two surfaces are at first flat and parallel with each other, but as the ovules in its interior grow in size, they become convex. The sap from the leaves now passes through what was formerly the peduncle or flower-stalk into the green walls of this pod or ovary, which acts like a leaf on the atmosphere, and having been rendered there additionally nutritious, the currents finally meet and pour their contents together into the little cord of vessels, or seed-stalk, which attaches the ovule, or forming seed, to the maternal wall of the ovary, and which may be very properly called the umbilical cord, or vegetable navel-string. The currents of sap are all converging to those little seed-stalks, to those forming plant embryos contained in the seed, and the little store of starch is being prepared which is to support their infant-life. Nature carries on this process until the embryos, their food, and the wrappers, or seed-covers, are all perfected, the transformation of the ovule into the seed is then accomplished, and all the movements of life cease.
We must add that the seed-vessel as it matures always assumes such an organisation as is calculated to effect the dispersion of the seed which has been thus brought to maturity. Sometimes the seed-vessel opens with a spring-like mechanism, as in the furze-bush and garden balsam, and the seeds are projected to a considerable distance from the plant. Who has not seen the wind performing its duties as a faithful servant of Nature, and transporting the seeds of the willow-herb and dandelion from their parent plants? The beautiful stellate down attached to those seeds—what is this but a contrivance catch the breeze? Here we must stop. We are entering a new and vast field where Nature displays her usual provident care. If any of the innumerable seeds thus scattered abroad find a suitable home, all is quiet until the return of the proper conditions of temperature, air, and moisture, when our little friend wakes up, re-appears on the earth’s surface, running through precisely the same instructive and ever deeply interesting life-movements. And we must add, in conclusion, we are always glad to see our little friend, to whom we are becoming every season increasingly attached.
LONG EXPECTED.
I.
In expectation, all the year,
I watch and wait, I watch and wait;
I keep within a court of state;
Perchance, e’en now, the time is near.
II.
For who can tell the very day
When he shall sail love’s tropic seas,
Borne on by sweetest fantasies
To golden regions far away?
III.
The spring-time comes, and hope is high,
For winter’s snows are past and gone,
The summer seems to call me on,
The violets whisper “She is nigh.”
IV.
Sweet summer cometh, crowned with flowers,
And then my heart of hearts is gay,
For to myself I often say,
“My love will choose the summer hours.”
V.
But summer fades to autumn’s gold,
Yet still I watch and still I wait;
I think—“My love, she cometh late,
The days are short, the nights are cold.”
VI.
Then winter follows, dark and sere,
And then I trim my beacon-light,
To guide her through the darkest night,
And so I measure out the year.
VII.
And thus the rolling years pass by:
At times I think “She will not come,
Perchance the way is wearisome
And dark, beneath a wintry sky.”
VIII.
But yet I know she comes from far,
As surely as the silver light,
Flashing for ages through the night,
From some yet undiscovered star.
IX.
And so I keep my court of state,
With all my heart in solemn dress;
With everything in readiness,
I watch and wait, I watch and wait;
X.
Gazing towards the eastern sky,
Waiting the coming of the morn,
The first faint dashing of the dawn,
Waiting and watching—till I die.
