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HOW COAL WAS FORMED.

ages ago, they covered the surface of the earth, and flourished over the immense wastes of the primeval world. Then came a succession of vast revolutions of flood and fire, and the cedars and the pines were buried under the deep waters, and afterwards embedded in the bowels of the earth, until the heat

and the immense

pressure to which they were subjected duly converted them into coal. In our household fires we are burning, therefore, the relics of extinct conifers, of trees which embellished the sur

face of the earth thousands of years before the creation

of nature, had been put into the garden of Eden to dress and keep it," the cedar and the pine, and their congeners, "were purifying the atmosphere, and rendering the earth a fit habitation for him and, by the same wonderful process, storing up, in the vast quantities of carbon thus appropriated, a mechanical energy which, after a sleep of millions

;

WONDERS OF DIVINE WISDOM.

107

of years, was destined to rise again as the great physical regenerator of the human race."

I hope my young readers will understand this, for the fact is a very wonderful one, and well worthy of their thinking over. What is the use of facts unless we endeavour to gain some lesson from them? And of this particular fact the lesson is, that the forethought and wisdom and power of God are beyond all human calculation.

CHAPTER VII.

GRAVEYARD TREES.

The pillared dust of sounding sycamores.-TENNYSON.

The yew, obedient to the bender's will.-SPENSER.

Old yew, which graspest at the stones

That name the underlying dead,

Thy fibres net the dreamless head,

Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.-TENNYSON.

The cypress, funereal.-SPENSER.

The cypress! 'tis

A gloomy tree, which looks as if it mourned

O'er what it shadows. . . .

Its branches

Shut out the sun like night.-BYRON.

"

AM going to talk to you this morning, said Arthur, "about Graveyard Trees.”

"Graveyard trees!" exclaimed Walter; "what do you mean? I never heard of them before."

"I mean those trees which are generally planted, or found growing in graveyards; such as the yew, the cypress, and, perhaps, the sycamore.

ABOUT THE CYPRESS.

109

"We have bor

rowed our custom of planting the CYPRESS in our graveyards and

cemeteries from

the Turks, who were probably led to select it as an ornament for the last resting-place of the dead from its dark, deep, and funereal foliage, which remains un

changed through

out the

year. But

the same custom

prevailed among the Greeks and Romans, who also

placed cypress twigs in the coffins

of their dead, and suspended them about the portals of the house of mourning.

THE CYPRESS.

VALUE OF CYPRESS WOOD.

"The tree is a native of the Levant, the north of Africa, and the south of Europe, but, of late, has been successfully cultivated in England.

"Its wood is reddish or yellow; is hard, close of grain, and indestructible; it emits a fragrant smell, is very resinous, and defies the attacks of insects. It is supposed by some authorities to be the gopher wood of the Bible. As a proof of its durability, I may mention that the cypress-wood doors of St. Peter's Church at Rome, erected in the time of Constantine the Great, lasted until that of Pope Eugenius IV., or upwards of eleven centuries."

'Eleven centuries! Eleven hundred years! What a tremendously long time!"

66

'Yes; and even then they were perfectly sound, and only removed because the pope wished to substitute brazen doors.

"I pass on to the SYCAMORE, also called the Great Maple. This is not commonly met with in English graveyards, but on the Continent and in America it is often used. At all events, it is a noble tree, and well adapted, in my humble opinion, as a canopy for the 'slumbering dead.' It presents an almost unbroken mass of foliage, which for the greater part of the year is a glorious object. spring it shines with rich, tender, glowing, and harmonious tints; in summer, the green is of a deep and intense shade; in autumn, there is an indescrib

In