Thou art doing thy part of good, green leaf,
And shedding thy ray of grace:
There's a lesson written in thee, green leaf,
For the eye of man to trace.

III.

Thou art rough, and shrivell'd, and dry, old leaf,
And hast lost the fringe of down:
And the green of thy youth is gone, old leaf,
And turn'd to yellow and brown.

There are sisters of thine trod in clay, old leaf,
And in swollen rivers drown'd;
Ah, but thou tremblest much, old leaf,
Looking down to the greedy ground.

The autumn blast, with thy doom, old leaf,
Cometh quickly, and will not spare,
Thou art kin to the dust to-day, old leaf,
And to-morrow thou liest there.

For thy work of life is done, old leaf,
And now there is need of thy death.
Be content!  'Twill be all for the best, old leaf,
There is love in the slaying breath.

SEPOY SYMBOLS OF MUTINY.

THE conspiracy which broke out in British
India, by the mutinies of Sepoys, in the
month of June, eighteen hundred and fifty-
seven, was first shown by the circulation of
symbols in the forms of cakes and lotus-
flowers.

Herodotus described the lotus under the
name of the lily of the Nile, and Theophrastus
portrayed it as the Egyptian bean.  The
first historian and the first botanist have both
described it with extreme precision, and it is
mentioned by the first geographer, Strabo.
The Arabs call it the bride of the Nile.

Herodotus says, the lotus grows in the
country when it is flooded.  Its flowers are
white, and have petals like those of the lily.
The lotus-plants grow in great numbers, and
crowded together.  Their flowers close at
sunset, and hide their fruit, and they open
again when the sun re-appears, and rise up
above the surface of the water.  They
continue to do this until the fruit is entirely
formed, and the flower has fallen.  The fruit
is as large as that of a large poppy, and
contains a great number of seeds, like millet
seed.  The Egyptians pile the fruit in heaps
and allow the bark to rot, and they then
separate the seed, wash it in the Nile, and
after drying it, convert it into bread.  The
root of the lotus, which is called corsion, is
round, and about the size of a quince; and
its bark is black, like that of the chesnut
the root is, moreover, white inside, and it is
eaten either raw or cooked.

Theophrastus says, this bean grows in the
marshes and ponds; its stalk is about four
arms long, and is of the thickness of a finger
It resembles a rush which is not knotted
The fruit it bears, is of the shape of a wasp's
nest, and contains as many as thirty beans
each in a separate cell.  The flower is once
or twice larger than that of the poppy, and
is pink.  The fruit grows above the surface
of the water; the leaves are borne upon
talks like those of the fruit; they are large,
and they resemble a Thessalian hat.  The
root is thicker than the root of a stout rush,
and is partitioned like the stalk.  It serves
as nourishment to those who live near the
marshes.  This plant grows spontaneously
and abundantly, and can, moreover, be sown
in mud, with a bed of straw to prevent its
rotting.

After giving the accounts of the father of
history and the father of botany, it would
not be well to omit what is said by the father
of geography.

Strabo says, the ancient Egyptians used to
sail in barks over the lakes which were
covered with the beans, and shade themselves
with the leaves; as their descendants, in the
present day, shade themselves with the leaves
of the sedges and date trees.

Pliny the elder mentions the lotus, which,
he compares to a poppy: showing that the
lily of the Nile was known to the Romans,
although it began to disappear in Egypt from
their time—it has been supposed with the
religion of which it was a symbol.

Strabo says, the leaves, which were about
the size of Thessalian hats, were used as
goblets and plates, and the shops were
supplied with them.  Travellers of the present
day tell us, that the Hindoos use, as plates
and dishes, the leaves of the plantain tree
and those of the nymphæa lotus—the beautiful
lily which abounds upon their lakes.  The
leaves are large enough in Bengal to be used
by the people without having been subjected
to any artificial preparation.  At each repast
they renew these fresh and beautiful vessels,
which cost them nothing but the trouble of
gathering.  In the upper provinces, where
the leaves are smaller, several of them are
plaited together to make plates, and the
persons who make this work their trade are
called "barbi."  Just as in upper Bengal
there are still to be seen the barbi, who made
the lotus-dishes described by Strabo.  The
French traveller, Jacquemont, found upon
the banks of the lakes of Pentapotamus and
Cachemire, poor people living upon the lotus-
roots, just as poor people lived upon their
roots in Egypt in the time of Herodotus.  In
some parts of India the nut is eaten green,
and preserved as a sweetmeat; the Fellahs
of Damietta eat both the roots and seeds.
When cooked, the leaves are said to taste
like the best cabbages, and the roots like
chesnuts.

The disappearance of the lotus from Egypt
has been ascribed to the disappearance of the
religion of which it was a symbol.  The
scientific commission which accompanied
Napoleon, and whose services to science have
won far more honour to France than Napoleon,
lost under the shadows of the Pyramids,
could not find any traces of the lotus in the