shows them how to take the meanest possible
advantage of it:

"The young bride, divested of her bridal attire, and
quietly costumed for the journey, now bids farewell to
her bridesmaids and lady friends. Some natural tears
spring to her gentle eyes as she takes a last look at the
home she is now leaving. The servants venture to
crowd to her with their humble though heartfelt
congratulations; and, finally, melting, she falls weeping on
her mother's bosom. A short cough is heard, as of
some one summoning up resolution. It is her father.
He dare not trust his voice; but holds out his hand,
gives her one kiss, and then leads her, half turning
back, down the stnirs and through the hall, to the door,
where he delivers her to her husband; who hands her
quickly to the carriage, leaps in lightly after her,
waves his hand to the party, who appear crowding to
the windows, half smiles to the throng about the door,
then gives the word, and they are off, and started on
the voyage of life!"

There are some parts of this final
programme of persecution to which I have no
objection. I rather like the idea of the father
being obliged to express parental grief by the
same means which he would employ to
express bronchitis —a short cough. I am also
gratified to find that Etiquette involves him in
the serious gymnastic difficulty of taking his
daughter down-stairs, and of " half turning
back " at the same time. But here all sentiments
of approval, on my part, end. From
the foregoing passage I draw the inference
— as every one else must—that the bride-
groom is kept waiting at the street-door for
the bride, just as a begging-letter impostor
is kept waiting at the street-door for an
answer. And, when she does come down,
what does the triply degraded man find to
reward him for waiting ? Part of a woman
only; the rest having melted on the mother's
bosom. Part of a woman, I say again, with
a red nose, and cheeks bedabbled with tears.
And what am I, the bridegroom, expected
to do under these circumstances? To hand
what the mother's bosom and the father's
short cough have left me, " quickly into the
carriage," and to "leap in lightly" after it.
Lightly? After what I have gone through,
there must be a considerable spring in my
light grey trousers to enable me to do that.

I pursue the subject no further. The new
Divorce Court occupies the ground beyond
me; and I make it a rule never to interfere
with the vested interests of others. I have
followed a Man, by the lurid light of Etiquette,
from his Courtship to his Marriage; and
there I leave him with emotions of sympathy
for which the English language affords me no
adequate means of expression. I defy British
families (being a bachelor, I am not the least
afraid of them) to point out in any other mortal
affair which a man can go through, such an
existing system of social persecution against
the individual as that which is attached to
the business of courting and marrying when
a man undertakes it in this country. There
is the book with the code of inhuman laws
against the unoffending bridegroom, for
every one to refer to. Let the Shy Young
Man get it, and properly test my accuracy of
quotation ; and then let him say whether he
is still prepared to keep his eye on his young
woman, after he knows the penalties which
attach to letting it rove in that dangerous
direction. No such Awful Warning to
Bachelors has been published in my time as
the small volume on the Etiquette of Courtship
and Matrimony, which I now close with
a shudder henceforth and for ever.

GERMINATION.

Germination, or sprouting, is the first
sign of life given by a grain or seed. The
phases of life in a plant form a continued
circle, beginning with the newly-sown seed,
and running round until the plant continuing
its species, produces seeds like what it was
itself. In the seed a plant is, in its rudimentary
state, because the seed contains the
embryo which is the future plant. And, in
this condition the life of the plant is
suspended, and the seed may remain for a long
period, even more than a century—without
sprouting, if it is deprived of the elements
necessary for germination. Corn, after having
been preserved for more than a hundred
years and then sown, has grown immediately
and yielded abundantly. Hume is said to
have made grains of rye germinate which
had been kept a hundred and forty years.
And at Metz, in seventeen hundred and
seven, great quantities of wheat were grown
from grain which had been preserved in,
fifteen hundred and seventy, or a hundred
and thirty-seven years before by the Duke
d'Eperiion. It had been piled in immense
heaps, covered by a coating four inches thick
of quick-lime, and slightly watered by a
watering-can. The grain at the top had
sprouted and then died, forming thus another
coating for the exclusion of the air. There
are only a few exceptions to this great law
of germination, consisting of seeds like the
acorn of the oak, which, if not sown
immediately, will perish.

Every seed, whether twice as large as a
man's head, or as small as the finest dust, is
divided into two parts. The first is the.
embryo or young plant, and the second is the
covering or skin, which, however, sometimes
exists before the embryo, and is only a
portion of the ovary or seed-vessel. In most
plants the seeds have two skins, which are
called testa or teguments, and protect the
embryo from external injury. The seed-
coverings generally differ in appearance, the
outer one being thicker and darker than the
inner one. They are both, moreover, very
distinct and visible, as may be seen by peeling
off the skin of almost any seed, and especially
the horse-chesnut. The colour of seed-coverings
is almost always dark; but there are
plants especially in the leguminous family—