I felt I was in such highly respectable hands, that I thought it would look like an insult to ask for a trial before paying, especially as I was to have a written warranty.

Just by way of airing him, he was trotted up and down the yard; and he certainly went superbly, with fine high action, and with eyes full of courage.

The money was paid, and the stamped warranty was given, and I directed the groom to send him to my own stable in town, and returned by the evening-train to the rectory.

"Well, papa, what about the horse?" were the first words with which I was greeted by Miss Beaty.

"Well, my darling, it really is a superb creature, and will become you mightily."

"Didn't I tell you, papa," said she, kissing me, "that it would turn out well? You know I have a kind of presentiment about these things. You know I always get just what I want, just in the nick of time."

“Well, well, my dear, we shall see,” I replied, pleased with myself and her also.

The next morning, on returning to town, I thought that, just for form's sake, I would have his paces tried by a good rider, before ordering him to be sent home. Accordingly, I got a groom from a neighbouring mews. After giving my new purchase a good feed of corn, the groom mounted him. He certainly did not start very well; he swerved right round to begin with.

I did look at his foot, as desired; and there was the crack, so artfully filled up that I never should have discovered it myself.

"Why, I know the horse to be dead-lame," said the "6. "vet.", "and there is no cure for it."

Dear me, how my old friend, the groom, must have been deceived; but, at least, I had a written warranty, and I determined to see him again.

The old groom was busy as before, "wis'ss, wis'ss, wis'ss." I told him what I had discovered, but he was as calm and stolid as

ever.

"Well, you know, gemman, what Squire said. If you don't like 'un, return 'un, and there's your money for you."

I almost felt indignant with the "vet." for creating any suspicion on my mind as to the transaction; and I mildly communicated to him, when I next saw him, my belief that the very respectable vendor was perfectly innocent in the matter, and that my money was quite safe.

"the

He was trotted up and down, and the groom thought that, with regular work, he would go very well. At the same time, he gave office," as it is termed, to a fellow-groom that was standing by. Presently he said the horse had suddenly hurt his foot on a stone; and he certainly flinched with one foot whenever it was brought down on the hard road. It was very provoking; besides, why should the groom have winked in the way he did? It was all right, of course; but, perhaps, it would be but fair to have the opinion of a "vet." at once, instead of waiting for the three weeks' stipulated trial.

Accordingly, the "vet." was sent for, and

came.

The moment he entered the stable, he gave the same comical sort of grin the groom had done.

"Ah! an old acquaintance," he exclaimed. "Impossible," I said, somewhat hurt at his familiarity; "he has just come out of Northamptonshire."

"At all events, I have seen him bought and

again. Take my advice, and send him to the next sale at Aldridge's, and put up with the first loss."

Against my will, I was at length convinced, and the "horse of great beauty was knocked down for seven pounds. I am ashamed to say how much I gave for him; but let that pass. I have every reason to believe that he fell into the old hands, to whom, in fact, he was a regular annuity. I see the same advertisement appearing at regular intervals in the Times, and I have no manner of doubt that the old groom, the old physician, and the "horse of great beauty," with the wax-dressed hoof, go through their parts, during the season, with as much success and aplomb as on the occasion when I was the audience and the victim.

What Beaty said to me when I got home, and how I twitted her about her presentiment, it is not necessary to repeat. But this I know, the very respectable horse-coper must bait his hook with something different from a "horse of great beauty" before he gets another bite from the COUNTRY PARSON.

ANGELN.

IT has been said that the Russian War revealed to the majority of Englishmen the existence of the Crimea. The Slesvig-Holstein question has been too long before the world, and has been used too much by the lightest of littérateurs as a synonym for something utterly incomprehensible, to allow me to say that the Dano-German war will be for my countrymen the epoch of the discovery of Slesvig. But its exploration will certainly date from the AustroPrussian invasion. Thousands of tourists will trace this autumn the path of the German hosts, wander over the ground where the Dannevirke stood for well nigh a thousand years, maim their feet upon the execrable pavement of the long dull street of Slesvig town, look through the fiue (as far as the interior is concerned) Dom Kirche, drive along the road to Flensburg, on which the outnumbered Danes made their retreat, stop at Oversee to note the spot where they made such a gallant stand, and dealt such slaughter amongst the impetuous Styrians, lounge along the quays of Flensburg, or sail upon its beautiful inlet, and, as the term of their journey, revisit, as it were, Sundewitt and Alsen, with which the vivid descriptions of special correspondents have already made them well acquainted.

I cannot tell how Slesvig may look this autumn, after the tornado of war has swept across it, but if the recuperative power of nature is strong enough to give it anything like the same smiling aspect it presented last year, the tourists cannot fail to find much to delight them. Very easy of access, Slesvig, which no one formerly visited, because it led nowhere and had no special attractions, could boast no mountains or waterfalls, no world-compelling ruins or galleries, will now draw the curious who delight to gaze upon the theatre of important events, and charm while it fills with wonder all those Englishmen who love the rural beauty of their native land. For, but that the people speak platt deutsch and dialects in which it is difficult to say, so philologists tell us, whether German or Danish more predominates, but that they dress a little differently, an Englishmen fancies himself at home in Slesvig. As long as he keeps out of doors it is hard for him—in the summer time-to believe that he is not in England. In winter the bitterness of the cold would remind him that he was in another clime, and the blank, dreary appearance of the snow-covered land would strike him with no similitude to the English landscape.

I am presuming that the tourist visits the right part of Slesvig; but it is extremely prob

able that unless he has some suggestion to do so he will pass by the most interesting district, and come away with an indifferent opinion of the duchy. I know Sundewitt, which he is sure to visit, would please him well enough if it were in its natural condition, but it has been the great theatre of war, the camping-ground of sixty or seventy thousand soldiers, and when the armies withdraw it must change from a scene of animation to one of desolation. The rest of the duchy that he is likely to see, if he follows the track of the war or of the railway, is one long unbroken stretch of heath aud marsh, very good to fatten cattle for the London market, but very cheerless to look upon.

The interesting portion of Slesvig lies aside from the railway and from the war. The turnpike road from Slesvig to Flensburg, of which I have spoken, may be said to form its boundary. The traveller who, instead of making his way from Slesvig to Flensburg by the rail, chooses, perhaps from a desire to follow in the steps of the armies, the road, will find himself after he gets a mile or two out of Slesvig on a heath, broken only two or three times on the whole of the rest of the distance-some twenty miles-by villages, cultivated land, and bits of wood. On his left hand the moor will stretch as far as his eye can reach, and if his vision were powerful enough, he would follow it to the North Sea. On his right hand, however, it is stopped in less than a mile by hillocks covered with wood. Sheltered by those hillocks, and stretching from them to the sea, forming a semicircle of which this road may be called the line, and the sea, the inlet of Flensburg, and the Slei the outside, lies Angeln, a country which possesses even a greater interest to Englishmen than the quiet beauty which it shows to all comers, inasmuch as it is the reputed home of the race which gave their land its back-bone and its name.

I am no ethnologist; I do not pretend to offer an opinion upon the merits of the arguments which have been brought forward in the controversy whether the Angles did come from Angeln, but I have acquired a conviction that they did, which no force of argument, I will even say no proof, however strong, can shake. I was at home there. As I wandered through the narrow roads, with their thick, luxurious fences, in which the blackberries invited me to feast, as I was wont to do when a schoolboy; as I turned aside to ramble without purpose or goal up the green lanes, with their even taller and more unkempt hedges; as I strolled in pleasant footpaths across fields of about five or six acres, in which the oats stood in shocks waiting to be carted, or the ploughman whistled after his horses; as I caught every now and

WHEN We compare human life with plant life it is astonishing to what an extent their vital phenomena resemble each other. All the stages of human life, of infancy, youth, manhood, and old age, are well-defined in plant life. About this there can be no mistake. The life of man compared with that of a plant! Are then the ties which unite us to plants so intimate? Yes! far more intimate than is commonly believed! To convince my readers of this, to strengthen their love of nature, and to make to them the plant-world more interesting, is my object in thus comparing our own lifechanges with those of plants.

From the abundance which nature furnishes, we shall select—not a tree, for that sometimes outlives successive generations of men; besides, there is something strong, as well as enduring about a tree ;-no! we must give the life-history of something in the vegetable kingdom far more frail and perishable; the biography, for example, of an annual plant, one of those flowers which adorn the garden or the landscape for a few months or weeks, and then pass away for ever, to be replaced by other floral forms as the seasons change, equally graceful, beautiful, and perishable.

THE STAGE OF INFANCY.-This commences with the first movement of re-awakening life in the seed, and closes with the fall of the cotyledons or nursing leaves. If we plant the seed of such an annual in a suitable soil when Spring and warm weather come it will begin to germinate, or its life-movements will re-commence. It first attracts the moisture from the soil to itself. This produces the softening and swelling of its outer covering, which is finally ruptured by the growth of the embryo in its interior, which sends downwards through the torn seed-cover a little rootlet, and upwards a young stem, to which are attached the first pair of leaves. These leaves, which are thick and fleshy, form the great bulk of the seed, and are called by botanists cotyledons: they are, in reality, the nursing leaves of the young embryo. We call them nursing leaves because they perform a duty quite peculiar to themselves, and therefore different to the work done by the other leaves which subsequently appear

above them. They are thick and fleshy because they contain a store of starch, provisions elaborated by the parent plant which produced the seed, and whose last vital movements were expended in making this food for its offspring! On this store of starch, the infant plant, with its little root, and its stem bearing towards its summit the first true aerial leaves, is at first wholly parasitic, until it is sufficiently grown to attract from the earth and atmosphere a sufficiency of food for its support, and can do without the nursing leaves. It is quite obvious, therefore, that our plant must pass gradually from the stage of parasitism to that of independency.

During the first stages of its life, our little annual attracts oxygen from the air; this enters the nursing leaves, and through its influence, the starch which they contain is converted into a soluble sugary gum called dextrine, which the water absorbed during germination conveys to the rootlets in the soil, and to the young leaves forming in the atmosphere. Thus nourished, both grow, and the young leaves speedily expand and take the form peculiar to the plant.

With the progress of growth, the nursing leaves also undergo a great change in their appearance. Lifted above the ground and exposed to the light of the sun, they speedily expand and take a green leaf-like colour, becoming so much enlarged that they present quite a different appearance to that which they had when folded together and enveloped by the seed-skin. There can be no doubt that this change of colour enables them to discharge their nutritive duties more effectively. Now as the first rootlets and aerial leaves are formed principally out of the nutritive matter with which the cotyledons are furnished, they become gradually atrophied, or waste away and shrivel up, as the nutritious store in them disappears, and finally fall from off the stem. With the full development of the aerial leaves and the fall of the nursing leaves, the first stage of vegetable life, THE STAGE OF INFANCY, is closed. It is thus that Nature, like an affectionate mother, cares for the life of all her plant-children, and gently weans them, first gradually altering their organism so as to adapt it to a change of diet, and then by degrees withdrawing the sustenance afforded by the nursing leaves. Surely, nothing can be more perfect or natural than this analogy between these early stages of plant life and those of human life!

THE STAGE OF YOUTH. This is the proper vegetable stage, throughout which the plant is wholly independent of the nursing leaves, and draws its nutritious material entirely from

the earth and atmosphere, those two grand and inexhaustible store-houses of vegetable food. The commencement of this epoch is therefore marked by the atrophy and fall of the nursing leaves. See, how admirably the two extremities of our plant are organically adapted to the earth and atmosphere! A rootlet and a leaf, how different in form and colour! yet both are absorbents beautifully adapted to the two media into which they develope themselves. Their functions are the same. We cannot, in a paper like the present, undertake to enter minutely into the anatomy and physiology of these organs. Let it be remembered that this

is only a brief outline of plant-life, sufficient to awaken, we hope, a pleasing train of thought in the mind of the reader. It is enough then if we simply state the facts. The little rootlets descend into the soil, and put forth from their surface innumerable fine white, hair-like fibres, which are the instruments by means of which the plant takes up its food; its young stem ascends into the air, and its bark and fibre, arranged cylindrically in separate beds or layers in the stem, are spread out horizontally at definite points along its stem, in the form of numerous flat, horizontal, green plates, or absorbent surfaces, called leaves. The bark or cellular tissue of these leaves is penetrated by the fibres of the wood in the shape of veins, veinlets and capillaries, which communicate directly with the fibres of the stem and roots, and thus act as conduits of the sap from one extremity of the plant to the other. In this manner the sap brought from all the other parts of the plant is conducted to all parts of the leaf by these veins, veinlets and capillaries, to be thoroughly spread out and aerated in the leaves.

The processes of evaporation and absorption are greatly facilitated by the organisation of the skin, or epidermal covering of the leaves. This skin, with its porous openings, is adapted to the aerial medium by which the leaves are surrounded. The porous openings are called stomata. They are, in fact, self-acting valves, and consist of two cells together, usually of an oval figure, with a slit in the middle. They are so situated as to open directly into the hollow chambers, or air cavities, in the interior of the leaf. It is through these pores that the superfluous water of the sap is evaporated, and such gases absorbed from the atmosphere as are nutritious to the plant.

The structure of the stomata, or pores, may be readily perceived on the epidermis of the lily, where they are unusually large. The epidermis must be carefully removed, and having been freed from its chlorophyl or leafgreen, it must be placed between two strips of

glass, with a drop of water between them, so as to give it the necessary degree of transparency. Water ought, for this reason, always to be used, whenever objects selected from the tissues of vegetables are examined microscopically. The epidermis thus prepared will exhibit the pores, and the nature and beauty of their mechanism will be better understood and appreciated.

Hence, when fully formed, these aerial leaves aerate and elaborate the sap or nutritive fluid, in a much more perfect manner than the nursing leaves; and the growth of the plant is consequently more rapid after their evolution.

The leaves now contribute individually to each other's support, the lower leaves aiding in the growth of those that are above them, and contributing also to the development of that portion of the stem which is below them, and to the increase of the number of rootlets in the soil, and thus vegetative power gradually increases. We have a manifest proof of this in the increase in size of the leaves from below upwards, and also in the increase in the length of the internodes, or naked intervals of stem which separate them. For the size of the leaves and the length of their internodes depend wholly on the vegetative activity of the leaves themselves; and as those leaves situated towards the middle of the stem are not only larger, but more wide apart, than the leaves above and below them, it is evident that the growth of the plant is first accelerated and then retarded, and that the vegetative force is greatest about the middle of the stem. It is here, therefore, that the wave of growth culminates. From this point upwards the vegetative force diminishes, the leaves decrease in size, their internodes shorten, until finally the vegetative force is reduced to zero, and the leaves are crowded into those beautiful metamorphosed clusters, or rosettes, popularly called flowers. In the flower the wave of growth is depressed to a minimum, for when the flower appears, growth invariably ceases in that direction.

Our plant has now entered upon that interesting period which has been emphatically called "the change of life." We notice a peculiar alteration in its habits and structure. Another force has come into play-that of reproduction

which gradually gains the ascendency, checks the growth of the plant, brings the leaves together, and finally culminates in the production of flower-buds. These differ only from leaf-buds in having no power of extension, for as in the flower the vegetative powers of the leaves are reduced to zero, the axis of the floral leaves necessarily retains its rudimentary