they are placed. This is still more evident in trees where we find the young shoots of the îvy often forming rings round the trunks and thicker branches, like so many girths or braces. The intertwinings of the branches, and their serpentine direction, often bear a very exact resemblance to the distribution of blood-vessels in some parts of the animal body; and I have remarked a circumstance still more curious, that whenever the branches which cross each other have become as thick as one's little finger, they grow together at the points of contact, so as to become perfectly consolidated with each other. This is still more striking in the larger branches, and you will often, on observing the trunk of an ivy bush, find that it is composed of a congeries of smaller stems which have all grown together into one mass, and formed what, without examination, would seem to be one simple uncompounded trunk.

It would be tedious to dwell longer on the ivy; the observations I have made respecting it may possess less interest than is attached to the history of many other plants, but I would rather that you should at present have a theme, however limited, for contemplation in things which are common, and which you have known from childhood, than in matters of much higher

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consequence, but which you could only have a knowledge of by hearsay. And let me again assure you, that the habit of contemplating nature is an inestimable and endless source of happiness. You have not yet lost the love of her which is originally implanted, I believe, by the Creator in every human bosom, though, as things are, it is almost always crushed and kept down by ignorance of its value and a vicious and erring system of education. In early life, when we are the children of nature more than of art, all the works of God which we hear or see are sources of pleasure. The gurgle or music of flowing waters, the green of sloping banks enamelled with blossoms, the shadows of the flitting clouds, the waving of ferns and other ,foliage pendent from the cliff, the song of birds

and hum of bees, the grey rocks, the mountains, woods, rivers, and lakes, all speak to the instinctive bias within, and an undefinable pleasure is the result, though, perhaps, the causes of this may not at the time be suspected. In after life we may be too wise, perhaps, to be influenced by such trifles, yet we cannot divest ourselves of a delightful feeling, when we think of the times when in boyhood we were con versant with nature. We may say, indeed, that the pleasures then felt arose from the weakness

and inexperience of youth; but still we recall their memory with a melancholy gratification, and to enjoy the same happiness we would almost willingly be weak and inexperienced again.

As we ascend higher in the ravine, we observe some changes in the vegetation. The mosses are more numerous, the woodroof becomes plentiful; the heath-pea shows its beautiful blossoms; the rein-deer lichen clothes the tops of banks with its hoary and coral-like tufts; the polypody; the oak-fern; that most beautiful little plant the maiden-hair fern, and many more species, afford us ample variety, and speak on every side the goodness of God, while they display the beautiful workmanship of his hand. Still ascending, we arrive at a cascade, where the water rolls from a height of above thirty feet, down the face of a jutting cliff, which is flanked obliquely on each side by huge walls of rock. The summits of these are crowned with oak and ash trees; and from the cracks and fissures in the sides, a number of tortuous old trunks spring out, which, with the ivy and other vegetable tracery, give an indescribable interest to the scene. The repose which reigns in this place is not disturbed, but is rather heightened by the incessant sound of

the falling water, which comes down as white as the drifted snow, and for ever boils, and foams, and bubbles in the deep dark basin which receives it.

ON returning from our walk, which I fear you have by this time found but too tedious, we shall attend a little to some of the minuter

productions of organised nature. There is, perhaps, no error more common than to consider objects as unworthy of attention because they are small, and, indeed, both the great and the little vulgar generally set a value on things

far only as they can be made subservient to temporal, ordinary, or selfish purposes. If money can be made by them, or if they can be eaten, or if they be useful in any manufacture, then they are considered as of some value; but if none of these uses are apparent, they are looked on as worthless, and beneath a wise man's notice. Yet this is to think as a fool; for it is in the minuter parts of creation that the works of the Almighty proclaim most clearly to us the wonders of his hand, and that man cannot be entitled to the appellation of wise who dares to contemn or asperse them.