she could bear it no longer, when at last, with a feeling of the utmost repugnance to the act, she snatched up the poor lacerated mouse, and killed it in a moment. On seeing her do this, two very delicate and estimable young ladies gave themselves up to shrieks and hysterics, although they had known for the previous half hour that the little helpless animal had been enduring the most cruel torture in the claws of the cat, and they had borne this knowledge with the greatest composure.
It is not, then, a delicate shrinking from the mere sight of pain, which constitutes that kindly feeling towards the animal creation, that forms so estimable a part of the female character; but that expansive sentiment of benevolence towards all the creatures of God's formation, which is founded on the principle of love, and which operates as a principle in prompting us to promote the good of all creatures that have life, and to promote it on the widest possible scale.
But to return to the subject of botany. A woman who does not love flowers, suffers a great want in her supplies of healthy and natural enjoyment. How could the poet Milton, when he pictured woman in her highest state of excellence, have employed our mother Eve, had he made her indifferent to the beauty of the plants of paradise, or negligent of the flowers which bloomed around her? Still, I must acknowledge that there is to many minds, something the reverse of attractive in the first aspect of the study of botany, as it is generally presented to our attention. In this I am supported by one of the most gifted of modern authors, when he speaks of the "ponderous nomenclature" of botany having frightened many a youthful student back from the portals of this study. There are many persons now advanced in life, who deeply regret their want of what is called a taste for botany, when the
