A seed may well be wonderful, Mamma, if God approved of it but can you tell me how a seed grows?

M.-No, my dear :-the reason of man is always baffled when it tries to make out what life is, even the life of a plant. We can see a number of contrivances for sucking up the juices of the earth into the plant; but how the plant picks out from these juices what is proper for feeding itself; how it keeps adding to its size, and manages to make every new addition like the old matter;—all this is beyond the bounds of human reason. Which do you think is the most important part of a plant, Emily?

Emily considered a little, and then said: I hardly know whether to say the fruit or the seed; but I think I must fix upon the seed; for if any plant did not bear a seed, we should soon have no plant of the kind, and then we should lose all the other pretty and useful parts of it.

M.-I think, dear, you have answered right, and it is interesting to see how carefully the parts that are to produce the seed, are protected till their task is done. If you take a bud and pick it open, you will see how closely wrapping after wrapping lies one upon another. First you have the thick leaves of the cup; and then the fine, soft leaves of the future flower. When all these are removed, you will find the parts that are to produce the seed safely lodged in the middle.

E.—I shall find those little odd, thin stalks, Mamma, not so thick as a thread, with heads to them: are they the parts you mean?

M.-Yes, love; these will produce a seed between them, but their names are too hard for you to remember. When these are ready to perform their office, the bud bursts open, and very often the shape of the flower is such, that the light and warmth is reflected from its leaves upon the seed-forming parts. Have you ever observed a wheat-field, when it is just beginning to be in ear?

E. No, Mamma; not particularly: but the ear seems at first, I think, to peep up out of some green covering ;—a sort of sheath.

M.—Yes; as soon as the plant begins to shoot, the two upper leaves of the stalk join together round the ear, and protect it till the pulp has acquired some degree of firmness. In some water-plants the flowering and seed-forming is carried on within the stem, which afterwards opens to let loose the seed, when it is formed. I see you have a sweet pea in your

hand: the sweet pea is one of a large tribe called butterfly plants; or at least that is the meaning of the hard name they go by.

E-Butterfly plants-why so Mamma? Oh, I suppose these are the wings of the butterfly, are they?

M.-Yes.: but look at the inner blossom?

E-It's like a little boat.

M.-True; it is called the boat or keel. The seed-forming parts are safely shut up in this case, which is itself protected under a penthouse formed by the outer flower-leaves. This kind of blossom turns its back to the wind, when it blows hard enough to hurt its precious contents. If you look at a field of peas in blossom, you will see that they all turn their backs to the wind as regularly as a weather-board or tin cap upon the top of a chimney.-There are some trees in which the bud is begun one year, to be ready for the next spring; so that it has to get over a winter. You may see this in the ash and the horse-chesnut.

E.-Oh yes, I have seen those hard knobs, Mamma; are they the buds?

M.-Yes; each of these is a bud tightly wrapped up, and then enclosed in scales, which are the remains of old leaves and the first beginnings of future ones. In the coldest climates there is a coat of gum or resin over all, which will keep out any frost. When the fine weather comes the gum melts, and allows the leaves and flowers to open.—When the seed of a plant is fully formed, the flower drops off, and the vessel in which it is contained grows larger, till it sometimes reaches an immense size. What is the largest you can think of?

E-Why, perhaps the pod of a great Windsor bean.

M.-Oh, you know many much larger than the pod of a Windsor bean. What do you think of a melon, or a gourd ? E-Aye, but a melon is a fruit, Mamma, not a seed vessel. M.-What is there in the inside of a melon, Emily?

E. Oh, Mamma, I never thought of that: it is full of seeds, I declare; but then it is a fruit too, isn't it Mamma ? Dear me; I do believe that all fruits are seed vessels. Let me see:-oh, a strawberry; that has no seeds in it; has it?

M.-No: but has it none on it, dear? The seeds are those little grains that are pricked into its surface. In stone-fruits and nuts, the seed is at last shut up in a strong shell; in grapes, oranges, and all kinds of berries, they are plunged

overhead in a thick syrup, contained within a skin or bladder. In apples and pears, again, they are lodged in the heart of a firm, fleshy substance :-you see in how many different ways the seed is preserved even in fruits.

E-I do indeed, Mamma. How very, very wise and powerful God must be! and how glad I am, that I happened to think a seed wonderful. Are there as many different kinds of seed-vessels that are not fruits?

:

M.—The variety of them is endless sometimes we have the seeds in a soft, but stout pod; sometimes in a sort of bladder; sometimes they are lodged between hard scales, as in the cones of a pine; or set about with spikes and prickles as in the artichoke and thistle. In mushrooms they are placed under a sort of penthouse: in ferns, within slits on the back of the leaf. But it would be endless, to describe all the different ways in which this one object, the preservation of the seed, is gained. And this preservation is just carried as far as it should be, and no farther; the seeds are preserved so securely as to keep up the kind of plant, age after age; but not so securely, as to save them from the birds and insects that feed upon them, or from man, who often wishes to collect and sow them in greater abundance, than they would be found in, if left to themselves.

E. But when the seeds are ripe, Mamma, how do they get out of their different cases, that you have been telling me of?

M.—Why my dear, the cases open of themselves to let them out; and in every plant of the same kind they open in the same manner: even nuts and shells, that we can hardly crack with our teeth, divide and make way for the little tender sprout which proceeds from the kernel. You can tell me yourself how the dandelion seeds travel from place to place.

E-Oh yes, I often see them floating through the air on their wings.

M.-True; and a large class of plants have their seeds furnished with these useful wings, so that they are often carried by the wind to great distances from the plant which produces them.

E-How long will a seed last good, Mamma? Will the seed of one year grow the next?

M.-Dr. Paley says, that a grain of mustard seed has been known to lie in the earth for a hundred years, and then, as soon as it has acquired a favourable situation, to shoot as vigorously as if just gathered from the plant.

E.—A hundred years, Mamma! But how could any body know, that the seeds had been lying in the ground all that time?

M.-That is more than I can tell, Emily: I am rather like you in wishing to know, how this wonderful fact was ascertained. But I have another thing to tell you about a seed that is very surprising. There is folded up in the seed a little sprout.. which is the future plant. The sprout is so brittle, that the least touch will break it: but it is so well protected, that the seed may be handled as rudely as you please, tossed into sacks, shovelled into heaps, and so on;-and yet this little germ, as it is called, this miniature plant, remains unhurt.

E.—I am sure, Mamma, that Richard shovels his oats about without ever thinking of these little sprouts. It's well that their safety does not depend upon him.

M.-Yes, but Richard would be more careful, dear, if it did: for though he never thinks about our little sprout, he knows that the seeds will not be the worse for all his shovelling.

E.-I should like to know, Mamma, what happens when the seed is put in the earth. Can you tell me that?

M.-We will suppose a grain of corn cast into the ground. Presently there would shoot from one end of it a little sprout; and from the other, a number of white threads, which would form the root.

E,-But, when a man scatters the corn, it seems all chance, which end falls uppermost; surely it would not do, to have the sprout shoot downwards and the root upwards.

M.-No; but this too is provided for by the Wise Being, who made the herb yield seed after its kind. No matter which way the plant begins to shoot: all will soon be set right: the sprout, if it began to go downwards, will soon turn upwards and struggle into the air and so the roots, after shooting upwards a little while, will presently bend down, to fix the plant in the ground, and collect nourishment for its support.

E-What a business it would be, Mamma, to sow a field of corn, if it were necessary that every seed should be placed in a right direction!

M.-It would indeed.—But I think I shall tire you Emily, if I go on any longer, and you have but just time to sow your mustard and cress before dinner.

E.-Thank you Mamma-I will go directly; but I want to say one thing before I go. In the chapter I read to you

last night,* St, Paul compared our death and resurrection to the death of a seed in the earth, and God's giving it a body again, as it pleaseth him. Now Mamma, the seed does not die in the earth, does it? for the new shoot is a part of the seed.

M.-True; nor shall we, that is to say the whole of us, ever die. Our souls, you know will not die; and though they will be separated from our bodies till the day of judgement, God will then clothe them again with bodies, and those not corruptible bodies, but incorruptible.

E. Yes, Mamma :-so those bodies will never die again, as the new plant will.

M.-Never Emily:-and the new body of the plant, though much more beautiful than the dry seed, is no better than the old body from which the seed was produced.But our new bodies will be raised in glory and in power: they will be raised spiritual and celestial bodies, and we know that the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial another.-Emily kissed her Mamma, and ran out to sow her mustard and cress.

A QUERY.

A

Ar Göttingen, in Germany, a young woman of four or five and twenty, who could neither read nor write, was seized with a nervous fever; during which, to the surprise of all about her, she went on talking the learned languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, in a very distinct and pompous manner. young physician was so struck with the thing, that he determined to spare no pains to get at the bottom of it. Sheets full of her ravings were taken down from her own mouth, and were found to consist of sentences, correct and intelligible in themselves, but jumbled together without any connection.Of the Hebrew, but a little was from the Bible; the greater part being from the later Jewish writers, who are called the Rabbis, and their works the rabbinical writings. All trick or conspiracy was out of the question: the girl was a harmless, simple creature, and was evidently labouring under the influence of a nervous fever. The young physician, who could make nothing out at Göttingen, at last succeeded in discovering the place where her parents had lived: he travelled thither, and learnt from an uncle of the girl's, who was still * 1. Cor. xvi. 36.