42

LETTERS FROM SISTER JANE.-NO. II.

I have also been to see a most beautiful Church, at Belem, called the Church of St. Jeronomie, and saw the coffins of two or three of the Kings of Portugal. They were covered with red cloth, and very handsomely trimmed with silver. The churches are very rich; but it seems to me the people must be impoverished to support them with so much wealth.

I have also been for a sail up the Tagus, which is a very noble river. Lisbon looks very well viewed from it; it is built upon several hills, which makes it very fatiguing to walk, there being no foot pavement as in England. The shops have no windows, but a pair of folding doors, which stand open all the day, and give light to the shop, as well as serving for an entrance.

Lisbon is chiefly supplied with water, by a noble aqueduct, of white marble, which unites two rocky hills across the valley of Alcantara. The arches are supported by square pillars, and are so high, that a fiftygun ship might pass under them. This is the noblest structure, of the kind, which has been erected in Europe since the time of the Romans:—the discovery that fluids, when conducted through pipes, will rise to nearly their level, superseding the utility of such stupendous structures.

I must now conclude this letter; I will, however, write to you again by the next packet. Until then, good bye,-God bless you, my dear child.

I remain, your affectionate sister,

JANE.

Lessons in Botany.

"And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop, that springeth out of the wall.”

I. WHAT BOTANY IS.

Botany is a charming study-so every one says who has studied it-and so we think you will say and believe, by the time you have taken half a dozen lessons in it. Some children and youth think it only fit for older persons; but this is a great mistake. Among the thousands of our readers, there is not probably one who cannot learn something about it, and who would not be delighted with it.

If you live in the country, you cannot visit a brook, or a meadow, or a mountain, or even walk along the way-side, from May to October, without passing many plants or flowers, or both. Every one of these opens a world of wonders to those who study Botany; while those who do not, often go along, and never see them; or, if they just see them, they seem not to take much more notice of them, than the lambs or the pigs do. Did not He, who made both us and the flowers, intend that we should be better acquainted with each other?

If you live in a city, and never go out of it in your whole life, you may also see a great many plants and

flowers. Your friends will have house-plants, or gardens; or the men will come along with whole cart-loads of them to sell; or you may see them in the various public gardens.

Perhaps, indeed, you love to look at flowers, and to play with them,-just as you would love to examine and play with a beautiful piece of calico, or an elegant picture; and then when you have looked at them a little while, you love to tear them in pieces! But, if this is all you care about them, you are not yet Botanists.

We are to begin to-day, our lessons in this interesting. science. We are to tell you about the study of trees, bushes, briars, vines, grapes, grains, weeds, and mosses, -and, especially about their flowers.

For mosses that

grow on fences, and the rough bark of huge trees, and even on the rocks, have flowers on them, as much as the rose bush, or the magnolia-only they are so small, that you cannot see them with the naked eye. You must look closely with a magnifying glass, and then you can see them.

There are thirty thousand kinds of plants known in the world, and of course, as many sorts of flowers. Now, as there are millions and millions of some of these kinds, what an innumerable multitude of flowers there must be in the whole world!

Let us walk into the orchard. The apple-trees are not yet in full bloom, but the blossoms begin to appear. You see them in the buds: and the buds are just beginning to swell. They will open in a few days-and

then-O what a beautiful sight!

Let us walk on: see! almost every tree will blossom: there will be hundreds, and even thousands, on a single tree; and on some large trees, tens of thousands.

If there are no more than 5000 blossoms on each tree in the orchard, and, if there are 200 trees, how many blossoms are there in the whole orchard? Is it not a million? But, if there are, in the whole, half a million of such orchards in England-and it is very possible that there are—and they were all as full of blossoms as this tree, what a host of them! Five hundred thousand millions of apple blossoms alone, is surely no small matter. Who could count them all, if he could come at them? It would probably take a person 5000 years -as long as from the time of Adam to this hour-to count 500,000,000,000.

Do you know how plants grow?

But we must first

tell you how animals grow, for they grow a little alike. The food which we eat, if it is good food, makes blood: the blood, soon after it is made, gets into the heart, which is hollow, and can hold a quantity of it. Then the heart drives it out, with great force, and sends it to all parts of the body, whence it comes back again, in a few minutes, to the heart.

Now, the hollow pipes, in which the heart sends out this blood, have some resemblance to the trunk of a tree; and the thousand branches, large and small, into which it divides, resemble very closely, the branches. So far, then, there is a resemblance; for water, or sap, gets into

the roots of a tree, and then the roots send it—or it goes into all the branches; yes, into the very smallest of them, and to all the leaves, flowers, and fruit. And this sap it is that makes them grow, just as the blood makes all the parts of animals grow. You have, then, to compare the heart of an animal, with the root of a plant; and, the great artery, that carries out the blood -with its numerous branches-to the trunk and branches of a tree.

Of what use are plants to man? Our bread, and almost all our food-except meat-grow on vegetables; and, we should have no meat without them,-for animals feed on vegetables. They cannot eat stones, or dirt. We could have no houses, but for trees-for it is trees of which boards are made: and those people who live where there is no coal, would freeze in the winter, and be obliged to eat their victuals raw in the summer, if it were not for trees.

Many of our garments are made of flax, and cotton, you know; but both of these are plants. Ropes, too, are made of flax, or hemp; and hemp again is a plant.

Besides all this, many plants are useful as medicines. A large part-indeed, almost all the medicines that you can see in an apothecary's shop, are either plants of some kind, or made from them.

THE EDITOR.

D A I S I T G ILL L L L L L L K