arctic clime. The cause is found in the
part which soil plays in ministering to the
life of Plant. Nature has ordained that
while heat shall control with undisputed
sway the chemical changes by which the
plant assimilates its food, and converts into
nourishment the raw material of its growth,
the soil shall supply to each some earthy salt
or mineral, different in every class of plants,
but not the less essential to the life of the
individual. Thus the plant is placed in this
respect at the mercy of soil. For, while
one plant must obtain a certain amount
of lime, another requires potash, and a
third silica. But, the soil does not everywhere
yield to the plant these necessary
conditions of its existence; and thus it
is enabled despotically to impose a check on
the progress of the plant over the surface
of the earth. Some classes of plants can
only live on turf soils, others in chalk soils, a
third in land abounding in soda. It is
especially those plants which require an unusual
ingredient, or a large proportion of a not
uncommon salt, that are most curtailed in their
wanderings by the power of soil. Thus
tobacco, requiring twenty per cent of lime and
magnesia is confined to a very few places;
and so the great sugar-producing species—
abounding in iodine and soda, can flourish
only in the sea. In the variety of its chemical
character, soil finds the means of binding to
special districts all the forms of vegetation.
Additional resources are furnished by the
differing mechanical conditions of the earth.
These have rendered it possible for soil to
ordain to some plants a residence on broken
rocks; to others a dwelling in loose powdery
sand, or rich clayed mould. Hence old Virgil
sang,

    " Not every plant on every soil may grow,
    The sallow-haunts, the watery ground and low,
    The marshes, alders: Nature seems t' ordain
    The rocky cliff for the wild ash's reign,
    The baleful yew to northern blasts assigns,
    To shores the myrtles; and to mounts, the vines."

Heat issues its orders that each class of plants
shall confine their journeyings within fixed
limits. The soil promulgates the decree, that
even in its wanderings through the permitted
space, the plant shall visit only certain localities.
Heat sways the fashion of the earth's
vegetable mantle in large regions of the
earth. Soil determines how each portion
shall be arranged, and where each floral
decoration shall be fixed, bringing together
plants of a similar nature, and arranging
them in what botanists have termed social
bands.

These laws remain for ever changeless in
their action. Since the beginning of the
world they have coerced all vegetable
nature beneath a sway alike salutary and
irresistible. Obedient to the laws of Heat,
vegetation has throughout all earthly time
advanced with the increase of temperature,
receded with its decrease. How great
the changes thus effected, recorded
history can tell. But a few centuries ago
Iceland still enjoyed a moderate degree of
heat, and then still shared in the culture of
grain; but, with the departure of heat,
wheaten  crops have also fled, and with
difficulty are some scanty ears of barley now
cultivated. Clover, as if for compensation, flying
from the dry summers of the south, has taken
refuge in the moister north. Northern
Germany has seen in the last eighteen centuries
a most propitious change. The labour of
man appears to have gradually conciliated
the goodwill of Heat, by levelling forests
and draining swamps, and cultivating the
ground; and, in a spot where Tacitus asserts
that not even a cherry, much less a grape,
would grow, the generous vine supplies a
happier race with rich draughts of noble
Rudesheimer.

This, with many other cheering facts,
should preserve in us the faith that it is
within the vocation and powers of man, by
availing himself of the all-powerful influences
of heat and soil, to save Greenland from
becoming an uninhabited waste of ice, or
Palestine from degenerating into a desert,—
everywhere, indeed, to resist the abasement of
nature.

MY CAVASS  AND I.

MY Cavass is eminently a fine gentleman.
The Greeks say that he walks like a
lady in an interesting condition. I should
be rather inclined to describe his gait as
a tragedy stalk, like that of a tragedian
of very great power at the Victoria
Theatre; but this is merely a difference of
opinion. A Cavass is a sort of body-guard or
man-at-arms off duty, who is the indispensable
appendage of an official personage in
the great kingdom to which I am accredited.
I have a Cavass, therefore, because I am an
official personage. I am Her Britannic Majesty's
deputy assistant sub-vice consular agent
at the island of Barataria. My former
profession was that of dancing-master at a ladies'
school. It was at my school that Lord
Charles Luckidown, eldest son of the almost
pauperised Earl of Strawtherby, met his
wife, the then Miss Plumbus, eldest daughter
of Plumbus, the great tea-man of the firm of
Plumbus, Chops, and Twigging, who died
worth one million and a half sterling. This
was why I was appointed, by the interest of
Lord Charles, out of gratitude, when he
got into Parliament, as deputy-assistant
sub-vice consular agent to the island
above-mentioned; and why the pasha and
barbarians of the place are made to tremble
at my nod. It is also, probably, why I am
not averse to nodding as often as an occasion
turns up which admits of my doing so.

It is an instructive and refreshing sight to
see me walk abroad with my Cavass. He