and herb-eating animals, to check the plant's
luxuriance; and then come the bird and the
flesh-eating animal, to thin the swarms of caterpillars
and the troops of grazers and browsers.

In the sea, the same sequence occurs.
First, sea-plants—not one of which is poisonous,
while many are nutritious and medicinal.
Then, the mollusk feeding on the sea-plant, and
fed on by fishes with teeth of steel and palates
of iron. Finally, the innumerable feeders,
great and small, who live by preying on one
another. Oysters, mussels, cockles, and other
shell-fish, who live "by suction"—by microscopic
particles brought to them by watery currents
caused by the vibration of their cilia—are
not a whit less than their greedier neighbours
the dependents and the offspring of
the vegetable world. The food they take
in (however minute), to increase their fleshy
growth, is entirely organic; although that flesh
secretes from the waters inorganic matters to
form their shell. Their diet consists either of
minute vegetable particles, or of infusorial
animalcules that have fed on vegetables.

The human race tops the ladder of organic
life very much in the style of "the House that
Jack Built." For this is the sportsman that
shot the duck, that swallowed the snail, that
gnawed the cabbage, that grew as a plant, in
garden ground. And this is the lady that picked
the lobster, that killed the codling, that
devoured the starfish, that crushed the whelk,
that bored the periwinkle, that nibbled the
plant, that grew at the bottom of the sea. All
flesh is grass, and all fish too.

Animals can do nothing with inorganic
materials, unless these have been previously
prepared by the vegetable. The vegetable
kingdom, therefore, as Jean Macé says, is the
vast kitchen in which are cooked the dinners
of the animal kingdom. When we eat
the ox, it is the grass which he has eaten
that actually nourishes us. For us, he is a
mere intermediary, who transfers to us intact
the albumen extracted by his stomach from the
juices supplied to him by his pasture-grounds.
He is only a waiter in the grand eating-house
of nature. The dishes he brings us have been
put into his hand ready prepared. Only, to
appreciate his services properly, we must
remember that the nutritious portions furnished
by grass are very small indeed in their weight
and dimensions, and that it would be a weary
for our digestion to have to elaborate them
one by one. We might be starved to death
with our stomachs full, as happened to some
unfortunate Australian explorers, who found
plenty of nardoo to eat, but nothing else. The
ox presents us with those little portions
concentrated in a heaped-up plateful; and our
stomachs are the gainers by his complaisance.

A world without plants would be, not a
wilderness—nothing half so pleasant as that—
but a stony solitude. The word "desert"
suggests but a faint idea of what a plantless world
would be; for even the desert has its oases,
and bears at least the traces or the remains of
life. Consequently, plants are mixed up with
every epoch and event of our existence.
Besides their inestimable usefulness, they are
ornamental, and suggestive of higher thoughts.
With flowers we crown the blushing bride;
with flowers we bedeck the pallid corpse. The
spring flowers on the graves of those we love
are typical of the resurrection we hope for.
Garlands and bouquets are universally the sign
of rejoicing and the recompense of virtue.
Green boughs show their welcome to the
returning hero, the liberator, the messenger of
peace. An olive-branch announced the
subsidence of the deluge. The forest was the
Druids' temple.

Although everybody is interested in plants,
it is only quite recently that their organisation
and functions have been revealed to us, and
that for the most part in works more adapted
to the perusal of the learned than for popular
instruction. To meet this difficulty, one of our
great, "vulgarisers," M. Louis Figuier, has
written a comprehensive Histoire des Plantes,
which (without depreciating other elementary
works) aims at giving the essential facts and
principles of botany, without overloading them
with minor details. His object has been to
inspire young readers with due admiration of
the Divine power and goodness, making it a
rational admiration, founded on a knowledge of
the Creator's works. For this purpose, he has
insisted on a branch of botany almost neglected
in introductory treatises, and all but unknown
to the world at large, namely, the cryptogamous
plants; that is, seaweeds, mosses, mushrooms,
lichens, and ferns, respecting whose growth and
reproduction modern botanists have made most
astounding discoveries.

Of this interesting work we have now
a version, The Vegetable World, from the
spirited publishers who last year gave us The
World Before the Deluge. A more welcome
gift-book can hardly be conceived for givers
possessed of moderate means: a portly volume,
handsome without and full within, excellently
and lavishly illustrated, with luxurious paper
and legible type, copiously treating of a subject
which interests young and old, rich and poor—
a book which may be read again, and referred
to, after the first burst of curiosity is satisfied.

Plant a seed—a kidney bean, for instance—in
moist garden-mould at a summer temperature,
it will soon begin to sprout. It will swell, and
then, by the marvellous working of nature,
a miniature vegetable will be produced. Two
distinct organs will appear. One yellowish in
colour, and branched, will make its way
downwards into the soil: this is the root. The other,
green in hue, will take an opposite direction,
rising towards the sky: this is the stem.

It is extraordinary that, in organisms devoid
of consciousness, their organs should have a
will of their own. The roots of plants are
excessively wilful, persisting in following their
own devices. They prefer one sort of food to
another, and follow it perseveringly. The way
in which they triumph over obstacles has