What see the Sons of the Sunland? A mystic beautiful maiden. Of man's generations. Through the glare of a crackling fire While on sticks and staves the maiden The Son of the Sun-god speeds in his wooing: Down to the shore he leapt, To the maiden full lightly. "O be gentle and kind to me, maiden ! But a man with life and with love. Lay thy head on my bosom, Gently she leant upon him, There streams from the Son of the Sun-god, The young people are not long of understanding each other, and settling the matter; but the consent of her monstrous old father Luminous armies of clouds And with gleaming and glance The armed warriors sweep by, The bright cloud-warriors, the angels Nor does the generous giant permit them to depart empty-handed: He gave of the booty and plunder, There is a touch of pathos in the picture of the blind old father standing on the strand, while the song of the sailors dies away in the distance: : He spake and she passed from her father, The wife of the Son of the Sun-god. Sailed the gold-ship through bright blowing breezes ; Lonely, lonely, on shore Lingered the blind one! While ever long while he listened, The knotted cord (the most valuable of the giant's gifts) occupies an important place in the last part of the poem, which relates how Kalla's brothers, finding their father on their return in a state of profound intoxication, and discovering the deception that Kalla had practised upon him, take to their boats and pursue the Son of the Sun-god. The pursuit is of course disastrously unsuccessful, and Peiwar carries home in safety the tall and plants were summoned to come and form comely bride : And the tale is still told on the Kölens, Still sung is the Saga in Lapland; a litter for the Virgin and Child in the Stable at Bethlehem. They all made excuses one after the other; some were too busy, some declared themselves too in Have passed from their homes in the South- significant, some too great, or it was too land Unto Walhalla ! From The Saturday Journal. THE titles given by our ancestors to distinguish one plant from another, before they were marshalled by Linnæus into battalions of orders and species, distinguished by the number of their stamens, and construction of pistils or arranged into more natural families by Lindley and the later botanists, are often extremely poetic. There is a wealth of imagery and of fanciful allusions, "playing with words and idle similes," in them, which is sometimes very interesting to trace out. Some plants are named, like the "Eyebright," according to the "doctrine of Signatures," ie., the notion that the appearance of a plant indicated the disease which it was intended to cure "the black purple spot on the corolla proved it to be good for the eyes," said the medical science of the day. Next come the similitudes. The "Day's eye," whose leaves spread, The Columbine, so called because in reversing the flower the curved nectaries look like the heads of doves (colombes) sitting close together in a nest. early or too late for appearing. At last this pretty little white star offered herself humbly for the place, and she was afterwards rewarded for her virtue by her flowers being turned to a golden yellow. St. John's Wort, St. Peter's Wort, flower about the time of their respective Saint's Days. The Star of Bethlehem, Rose of Sharon, Joseph's Walking-stick, Jacob's Ladder (the beautiful Solomon's Seal), are apparently accidental fancies. The Holy Ghost flower, the Peony, flowers of course at Whitsuntide. A series of traditions connects some peculiarity in a plant with an event in Bible history. The knotgrass, Polygonum persicum, has a large black spot on its smooth leaves, caused by a drop of blood falling from our Saviour, at the time of the Crucifixion, on one of the plants which grew at the foot of the Cross. The "Judas tree" is that on which the wretched traitor hanged himself in his misery-rather an unsafe stem to choose, but then it broke under his weight, as we are told. The Cross was made of the wood of the Aspen or trembling Poplar, and its leaves have been smitten by the curse of perpetual quivering restlessness ever since. The "Virgin's Pinch" is the black mark on the Persicary. "Job's Tears," so called "for that every graine resembleth the drops that falleth from the eye." The Passion-flower, in which all the five emblems of the Passion are to be found by the faithful, the nails, crown of thorns, hammer, cross, and spear. "Christ's Thorn," the Gleditchia, from which the Crown of Thorns was supposed to have been made. There is a whole garden full of plants sacred to the Virgin Mary, generally because they flower at some period connected with "Our Lady's Days, the Visitation, the Assumption, the Birth, the Baptism, Purification, such as the Cruciform plants are all wholesome, "Lady's Smock," "Lady's Mantle," the very sign of the Cross making all "Lady's Fingers," Fingers," "Lady Slipper," good things to dwell in its neighbourLady's Tresses," the pretty little green Ophrys with a twisted stem. The Virgin's Bower" begins to blossom in July, when the Feast of Visitation occurs, and is in fullest flower at the Assumption in August. 66 The "Lady's Bedstraw" belongs to no particular month, but has a very particular story for its name. The different hood." Or a bird or beast, as in the owl's note. "They say the owl was a baker's daughter," sings poor Ophelia. The legend declares that our Saviour went into a baker's shop and asked for some bread; the mistress put a piece of dough into the oven for him, but her daughter said it was too big and took away all but a little bit. It immediately swelled to an immense size. formed into an owl, to cry so all her life for her wickedThe girl began to cry "Heugh, heugh," and was transness. why she was so much valued in ancient days, seems not known. "If the diningroom," says Pliny, "be sprinkled with it, the guests will be the merrier." Many odde old wives' fables are written of it, tending to witchcraft and sorcerie, which honest eares abhorre to heare.” Evergreens have always been held emblematical of the hope of eternal life. They were carried with a corpse and deposited on the grave by the early Christians, to show that the soul was ever living. An earlier pagan use was when the Druids caused “all dwellings to be decked with evergreen-boughs in Little bits of historical allusions, and winter, that the wood spirits might take national loves and hatreds crop up refuge there against the cold, till they amongst the flowers. The striped red could return to their own homes in the and white rose, "York and Lancaster," forests, when spring came back again." symbolizing the union of the Royal There is one group of plants named from Houses, has a pedigree of nearly four human virtues and graces, quite inde-hundred years to shew. pendent of any qualities of their own. The early willow catkins are called Honesty, heartsease, thrift, true love, "palms," as they were used as a substiold man's friend, herb-o'-grace. Others tute in Northern counties for the real from some resemblance to bird or beast, leaves, and carried on Palm Sunday in larkspur, crowfoot, cranesbill, coltsfoot, procession,- the name is, therefore, the devil's bit, where the root seems to probably coeval with the Roman Catholic have been bitten off; adder's tongue, faith in England. "Wolf's bane" points cat's tail, pheasant's eye, mare's tail. to the time when the beast was still alive and dreaded in the English forests. Others owe their names to their virtues as simples, All-heal, "feverfeu" (fugis), the "blessed thistle, carduus benedictus, good for giddinesse of the head, it strengtheneth memorie, and is a singular remedie against deafnesse," we are told in old Gerarde's herbal. "Get you some of the carduus benedictus, and lay it to your heart; it is the only thing for a qualm," says Margaret, in "Much Ado About Nothing," quizzing Beatrice about Benedict. "Benedictus, why Benedictus? You have some moral in this Benedictus," answers Beatrice, testily. Each month had its own particular flower — the "Christmas rose," the pretty green hellibore, snowdrops, "fair maids of February," the "May flower," that covers the hedges with beauty, the "June rose." The "Poor man's weather-glass," the pimpernel, closes when there is rain in the air; the "Shepherd's hour glass," by which he knows the time of the day. The extreme regularity, indeed with which many flowers open and close at particular hours, is such that Linnæus made a dial of plants, by which a man might time himself as with a clock, by watching their petals unclose. The merely pretty allusions are many "Venus' looking-glass, Love lies bleeding, Queen of the meadows (the beautiful spiræa), Crown imperial, Monkshood, Marvel of Peru, Sundew, Silver weed, Goldie-lockes, "a moss found in marish places and shadie dry ditches, where the sun never sheweth his face." "Dane's Blood," the dwarf Elder, has peculiarly red berries, and shows the fear and hatred left behind them by our grim invaders. The English are accused by the Scotch of having introduced the Ragwort into Scotland, and they call it there by a very evil name. "Good King Henry" is a very inconspicuous ordinary wild plant, but as no King Henry, bad or good, has existed in England since the time of the eighth, the name is certainly very old. Other Christian names have been given, apparently merely from sentimental reasons, Sweet Cecily, Herb Robert, Basil, Sweet William, Lettuce, Robin run i' th' hedge, Sweet Marjoram, Lords and Ladies. The fairies have their share in plant nomenclature. Pixy pears, the rosy rose hips, which form the fairies' dessert, the "foxes" glove, which the "good folk" wear, the "pixy stools," or mushrooms, which form "the green sour circlets, whereof the ewe not bites." The grass is made green by the fairies dancing, and the stools are set ready for them to sit on when they are tired. There remain a number of names, which have accidentally been chosen to express particular ideas. "Lad's Love," given to your flame in the country, when the swain's words are scanty: Violet is for faithfulness, Why the insignificant vervain, or “holy- The "Pansy" ("that's for thought "), herbe," is "cheerful and placid," and or "Heartsease," still called in country And maidens call it Love in Idleness! "Rosemary" ("that's for remembrance"). "I pray you, love, remember," says Ophelia in her madness. It was carried at funerals : Marygold that goes to bed with the sun And with him rises weeping. and the marsh edition of it, "all aflame," as Tennyson describes it. 66 present nomenclature, by the piling up of The hosts of new shrubs and plants now continually introduced, require a more systematic kind of name-making than of old; but we cannot help sometimes regretting the poetry of invention which has passed away from us, the loving transfer of our human thoughts and feelings to the inanimate things around us, the beautiful religious symbols into the dark wall-which our ancestors translated the nature flower, and bright blue "Canterbury about them, and which so often must Bells," filled their gardens. have helped them to "rise from Nature "Speedwell," said the little blue Veronica in the hedge to the old folk who went before us. "Forget-me-not," called the turquoise blue Myosotis from the water as they passed by. "Bloody Warriors,' We pay for the convenience of our up to Nature's God." duced as the result of the decomposition of organic substances; and this hydrogen unites with the nitrogen to form ammonia. If these views are correct, they will have a considerable practical importance in agriculture, the value of a manure depending not so much on the actual amount of nitrogen present in it as on the quantity of carbonaceous substances which possess the power of taking up nitrogen from the atmosphere. THE SOURCE OF NITROGEN IN THE FOOD | impregnates the subjacent soil around the OF PLANTS. - A somewhat strange series of roots; in the second the nitrogenous comopinions are those that have been started by pounds are converted into insoluble humates. M. Dehérain in his recent paper in the "An- The air of the soil is therefore at a certain nales des Sciences Naturelles." While adopt-depth deprived of oxygen; hydrogen is proing the conclusions of Lawes and Gilbert, Ville and Boussingault, that plants have no power of absorbing nitrogen directly from the air, he still holds that the atmospheric nitrogen is the source of that which enters into the composition of the tissues of the plant. The results of a series of investigations which M. Dehérain has carried out tend to show that atmospheric nitrogen is fixed and retained in the soil through the medium of the hydrocarbons, such as humus, in conjunction with alkalies, and that this fixation is favoured by the absence of oxygen. In other words, the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen occurs when organic materials are in process of decomposition in an atmosphere either deprived of oxygen or in which that element is deficient. Under these circumstances carbonic acid and hydrogen are both given off, the latter uniting with nitrogen to form ammonia. According to the earlier researches of Thenard there are in soil two strata exposed to the action of the atmosphere- an upper oxidizing and a lower deoxidizing stratum. In the first stratum the nitrogen is obtained from the atmosphere, and AMERICAN PLANTS IN FRANCE. - Dr. Asa Gray states, in "Silliman's Journal" for February, that Ilysanthes gratioloides, a rather insignificant plant of the American flora, has recently been found in abundance in France, in the neighbourhood of Nantes. It is thought to have appeared there between the years 1853 and 1858, and to have been in some way received from the United States, but the manner of its coming eludes enquiry. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY 191, 192 TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. 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