Tom and his wife talked hopefully to- | Aunt Betsy with some dignity. gether that night. Surely Aunt Betsy was relenting, and would do something for them. If she took such a fancy to Bertie, she could hardly avoid helping his father and mother to bring him up.

"I can

trust you to do what I ask, at all events." "That you can, ma'am, faithful," cried Sailor. "Good-night, ma'am."

Early next morning, Aunt Betsy's ponychaise dashed through the village, driven by Skim at full gallop, and took the road to Biscopham. Old Mrs. Rennel had been found dead in her bed, he cried to the villagers, as he passed through. Sailor was standing at his door at the time, and presently a horse was splashing through the ford, and galloping away by bridle-paths and cross lanes in the same direction to Biscopham also.

From The New Quarterly Review. HABIT IN PLANTS, AND POWER OF ACCLIMATIZATION.

BY H. EVERSHED.

As Sailor was sitting in his cottage that night busy over some repairs in his habiliments, he was surprised at hearing a knock at his door. Opening it, he beheld Aunt Betsy wrapped up in a thick cloak, over her head a huge hood, called a calash, something in size and appearance like the head of a landau. Sailor had once been on good terms with Aunt Betsy; he had married her old confidential servant Jane who had left him a widower many years ago; and Sailor had entertained expectations from the rich old woman, which events had not verified. A coolness had arisen between them, which had ended in total estrangement. Aunt Betsy was never known to overlook or forgive any offence against her- THERE are, as we all know, among huself, and Sailor was a good deal surprised man beings, certain individuals who are at her appearance. She seemed strangely far more capable of adapting themselves subdued - almost frightened too. And to altered circumstances than others who, when she entered the cottage, and sat to outward seeming, are no whit better or down, she trembled violently. It was some time before she recovered herself sufficiently to speak, and then she began to ask questions about the boy Bertie, studiously avoiding all reference to his father and mother. Sailor spoke of the boy in glowing terms, and Aunt Betsy seemed pleased to hear him talk about the child. Presently, she rose to leave, but hesitated, as if having something on her mind. Sailor," she said, "I want you to promise me something."

66

Sailor said he'd do what he could. "Promise me, that if you hear that anything is the matter with me that I am ill, or anything of the kind you will take a horse, and ride over to Biscopham as hard as you can go, and bid Frewen, the lawyer, come to me at once; and if he isn't at home, you must go to Mr. Patch, his head-clerk. And Sailor, as you might have a sudden call, and no money for expenses, here is a sovereign for you to pay for the horse and gates. Only, you mustn't spend it, do you hear! You must bring it to me every Saturday night, to show me that you haven't spent

it.'

"Spend a sovereign as you'd given me, ma'am!" said Sailor; "it's much more likely I should send it to the British Museum."

"We'l enough of that, Sailor," said

stronger than themselves. The fact encounters us at every step in daily life. Of two young men who, with apparently equal chances of well doing, shall emígrate to a foreign country, one, and perhaps the more promising, shall turn into an idle loafer and die a drunkard, or shall take a fatal fever, or shall succumb to the new influences from weakness either of moral or of physical fibre; while the other shall plod on through every difficulty, make his fortune, and found a family in his new home.

With races this inherent difference is still more apparent. There is no obvious reason why a Frenchman should make a very bad colonist, and an Englishman or a German a good one; why a Jew should be able to make his way and his fortune through every impediment of climate, distance, and persecution; and why a North American Indian should die if he is taken away from his native wilds.

With quadrupeds and with birds there is the same fact to be noticed, differences between individuals, and still greater differences between species. It has been forced upon our notice very recently that the climate of the West African Coast is as fatal to most domestic animals as it is to the white man. To the dog, the horse, and the ox, its evil influences are fatal ; but the rat thrives, and indeed seems equally

at home and happy in a fever-stricken | harmed. On the other hand, let the heat mangrove swamp of the tropics as amid of the greenhouse be raised to hothouse the ice and snow of Melville Island.

The pheasant and guinea-fowl, whose native country is dry and hot, pass to and thrive in those that are wet and cold.

temperature, and the aloe dies; yet the very same heat only serving to force to its full luxuriance the maidenhair fern taken from its native habitat in a Devon

Cocks and hens, whose progenitors in-shire dell. habited the depths of Indian jungles, do well in almost every corner of the habitable globe, hot or cold, wet or dry.

These facts, and many similar ones, are familiar enough to most of us; but the no less latent power of resistance to new influences which is found strong in certain families of the vegetable kingdom, and weak in others, is less often remarked upon; likewise their faculty, developed by untoward circumstances, of meeting novel difficulties by novel resources. These peculiarities in plants are singularly interesting, and their bearing upon human economy makes them especially worthy of study.

It is, as a rule, impossible to say wherein resides this hidden power in the vegetable world, but we can take note of the cases where it exists; and records of these instances are of an importance which it is difficult to exaggerate.

There are other plants, less known, but even more remarkable for elasticity than the maidenhair fern; the Zephyranthes candida, for instance, is at home on the warm banks of the Plata, sows itself in the hot, dry country near Lima, and in Yorkshire resists the severest frosts. A hardly less striking instance of adaptability is the common Jerusalem artichoke ; brought from the equatorial regions of Brazil, it ripens its tubers perfectly in Scotland and in part of Northern Russia.

The adaptability of plants is of course due to more than a simple non-susceptibility to the alterations of heat and cold, or hardiness. There is also involved a power of meeting new difficulties by the development of new resources, and we need not remind the reader of the reliance placed on this faculty by the originators of the doctrine of evolution. There is the pitcher-plant of Borneo, which has modified its petiole, or leaf footstalk, into the pitcher, large enough, in some spe

Whatever may be the precise use of this curious vegetable water-pot, we may at least be quite sure that it is a development without which the existence of the plant would cease.

In this matter there is no concluding from analogy, no general law, or rather, no perceptible general law. The knowl-cies, to hold more than a quart of water. edge that we must acquire is as full of exceptions as of rules. It is as puzzling, and seemingly as contradictory, as any mere human system as much so, almost, as that monument of imbecility and prejudice, the Common Law of England. Then again, there must exist that withInstances of these inexplicable differ-out which the mere latent hardiness and ences are numerous enough. The wheat and the maize-plant-natives one of the north and the other of the south; one of the eastern, the other of the western hemisphere have migrated into each other's latitude, and grow side by side in the old and in the new world. The datepalm of Africa, on the other hand, is as non-migratory as a French peasant, and fails to thrive or fails to fruit, if taken far away from the hot, dry air of the sandy deserts. No hardier plant seems to exist than the aloe, which grows from a single leaf thrust into almost any kind of soil in sub-tropical countries, and makes strong hedges that no ill-usage will hurt. It is the blackthorn of Southern Europe; but let it be moved the few degrees that separate it from the north of this continent, and it becomes a delicate greenhouse plant, which is killed by the two or three degrees of frost that geraniums, brought Some singular examples of modification from hotter parts of Africa, will stand un-of form have been observed in seaweed,

latent adaptability would go for little, there must needs be, to make these things of real importance, the inherent power of transmitting to descendants newly-acquired developments; and in this respect also, there are variations and degrees. Winter wheat sown in the south of Europe in spring, would probably never ripen; and we have seen a field of Italian wheat blooming very disastrously several weeks too soon in this climate; and probably it would not have consoled the farmer to know that by persevering a year or two, his foreign seed wheat would probably acquire an English habit. Archbishop Whately grafted an early thorn on a late one, and vice versa, and the result was that the grafts came into leaf in future with their parents, so that there is something more than vigour inherent in the graft.

grown in the Lake of Stennes, in the Orkneys, where the algæ, growing at the end of the lake into which the sea flows, present the usual appearance, but further in they gradually became stunted and narrow in form, losing their air bladders and assuming a very novel aspect, till at the fresh-water end of the lake, they disappear entirely. Here it is evident that the requirements of the weed as a sea plant are different to what they are in fresh water, and that the plant has become modified accordingly.

straight as a plumb-line, and sometimes reaches to and roots in the ground. Here then, is an example of a parasitical or epiphytical plant, which is not entirely confirmed in its habits as a parasite. Others have entirely lost the power of rooting in earth, and others are like the Rhododendron Dalhousie of Sikkim, which sits up among the branches when obliged to do so, and is epiphytical only as it were on compulsion, but if it can find a suitable site, it grows much more readily in the ground.

It is in the tropical world that plants A spirit of restless selfishness permust call out their inherent resources, or vades the vegetable kingdom in the hot perish, and it is there that the most singu- and reeking forests of Brazil. There is lar examples of what the innate formative not sufficient air, light, or earth, for all force can do, in the way of modifying the the plants that come into being in those size or shape of organs, when it is ex- prolific scenes of life, and the conseerted in cases of necessity, may be seen. quence is, that crowd, and crush, and The forests of tropical lands are so tall struggle for simple existence which travthat an arrow from a strong man's bow ellers have compared to the cruel selfishfalls short of the tree summits, and so ness which might prevail in similar condark in their shadowy recesses, that a re-ditions of life among human beings. The cent writer has compared the canopy rule of life is, each for itself, and not formed by the palms and other broad-"live and let live." A parasite will take leafed trees, to the roof of a Gothic cathe- a neighbour tree in its gripe and use it dral. Near the ground, and in the dark, vault-like lower air, the full growth of plants is impossible; if they could not rear their flowers to the light of the sun, they would pine and perish in the dark

ness.

simply and entirely as a means for its own advancement. One of this class, a kind of fig, is known as the murderer, or murdering liana. Mr. Bates describes it as follows in his "Naturalist on the River Amazon:"-" It springs up close to the The plants which compose the under- tree on which it intends to fix itself, and growth have done this. They are all the wood of its stem grows by spreading climbers, and there is every reason to be- itself like a plastic mould over one side lieve that they have been driven to climb of the stem of its supporter. It then puts by the force of circumstances. The forth from each side an arm-like branch creepers are not of any particular family which grows rapidly, and looks as though or genus. Plants of numerous orders a stream of sap were flowing and hardenhave learnt to climb. Among the climbing as it went. This adheres closely to ers are plants in which this habit is the trunk of its victim, and the two arms unusual. There are Bignonias, Legumi- meet on the opposite side, and blend tonosæ, Gultifera, and there is even a climb.gether. These arms are put forth at ing palm (Desmoncus) with slender stem somewhat regular intervals in mounting of immense length, and an occasional upwards, and the victim, when its strantuft of leaves provided with hooks at gler is full grown, becomes tightly clasped their tips to hold on by. The long stems by a number of inflexible rings. These of these weaker plants twine in every rings gradually grow larger as the murform round the trees; sometimes they derer flourishes, rearing its crown of foare twisted like cables, or tied in gigantic loops and coils hanging at all heights from the ground, and sometimes they pass upwards by taking the form of a staircase, or by swaying to and fro in a zigzag shape. Our cuckoo-pint (Arum maculatum), an earth-loving plant, often sitting on the sides of wet ditches, has a near relation in the great valley of the Amazon, which is often seen perched on the branch of a tree, and sending out an air-root, or liana, which hangs down

liage to the sky, mingled with that of its neighbour, and in course of time they kill it by stopping the flow of its sap. The strange spectacle then remains of the selfish parasite clasping in its arms the lifeless and decaying body of its victim, which had been the help of its own growth. Its ends have been served, and it has flowered and fruited, reproduced and disseminated its kind."

The figs, generally, are great climbers, and they have justly been called the

beating it with a stick, and reducing the number of its branches. Topping a peartree, or checking the greed of the roots by pruning them frequently, has a similar effect. The sugar-cane grows too vigorously to yield seed in the West Indies, Cochin China, and the Malay archipelago; and the sweet potato (Batatas) does not

Thugs of the vegetable world, on ac-forces are busy with one part, the struccount of their destructive tendencies. ture of other parts must await their turn, Their character agrees with their rela- and perhaps lose it altogether, in the case tionship to that bad family- the sting-of plants whose career is short. If wheat, ing-nettles. There are numerous ex- for instance, is sown in very rich soil, it amples nearer home of what may be done grows, as every farmer knows, too vigby vegetables in an emergency. We orously to yield seed. "There exists a have seen a young elm save its life by a natural antagonism," says Darwin, "becurious, but not uncommon, modification tween the two forms of reproduction, of form. It grew at the edge of a slope of namely, by seed and by buds, when either about three feet in depth, and as its root- is carried to an extreme degree;" accordhold was threatened by the gradual wear-ingly, potatoes that are great croppers, ing away of the bank, the tap root of the yield very little seed in general. Plants tree became exposed, and had, at length, have sometimes been flogged into fertilto support its entire weight. The tap ity, and Professor Lecoq cleverly comroot of a tree is a weak organ, quite un-pelled a sterile Mirabilis to yield seed by able to bear its weight; but in the case in question, the exposure of the root had the effect of converting it into a true stem, with bark and leaf-buds, which was enlarged by an annual layer of wood beneath the bark till it became strong enough to support the trunk. A tree, which is so placed that its supports in one direction are gradually weakened, immediately be-yield seed in southern China. The wheatgins to secure itself by strengthening its other ties or props. Cultivated plants are the most accommodating and the most willing, as a rule, to vary their forms and character to suit the convenience of their cultivators. A sport, or variation from an established species, often preserves its difference through a line of descendants. The Emperor of China, according to the native chroniclers, availed himself of this principle when he selected, with his own imperial hand, a particular plant of rice which he had observed, and which thus became the originator, or propagator, of the only kind which ripens north of the great wall.

In the modification of the forms of plants, two principles are at work, one of which has been expressed by Goethe in these words: 66 In order to spend on one side, nature is forced to economize on the other." Every part of a plant being only a modification of the leaf, any cause which affects the flow of sap may influence the formation of particular organs, as in the case of the single wild rose, with numerous stamens and pistils, which are converted into petals by cultivation in rich soil, so that the single flower of the wild rose becomes the many-petaled blossom of the queen of flowers. The observation of such phenomena, led to the discovery of that fundamental truth in vegetable physiology which had dawned on the minds both of Linnæus and of Goethe, that a cell is the unit, whose multiplication forms the plant, and that when the active

plant runs to waste in the tropics. Breeders, both of plants and animals, are well aware of the law of "compensation," or "balancement of growth," which is simply this - that if nourishment flows to one part, or organ, in excess, it rarely flows, at least in excess, to another part; thus, says Mr. Darwin, "it is difficult to get a cow to give much milk and to fatten readily." The cabbage with a big heart is not good for seed; and in fact the best fruits of their kind-oranges, pears, figs, bananas, apples, grapes, pine-apples, etc.

produce the least seed; and as the seeds become atrophied by long-continued cultivation, the fruits gain in size and quality. In our poultry, a large tuft of feathers on the head is, generally, accompanied by a diminished comb; and a large beard, by diminished wattles. Gardeners knowingly stimulate particular organs in the production of those beautiful monstrosities, whose seeds are few and far between, and are so very charily disposed of. Flower-gardens blossom all over with beautiful illustrations of the manifold effects and surprising modifications produced by culture; and the cabbage-tribe, found alike in gardens and fields, on the sands of the shore, and on the edges of the cliff, is another example of the production of varied forms from one original type by developing peculiarities and fixing them by selection. The Scotch kail is one of the least modified varieties of the cabbage, and if its seedlings were neglected for a few generations, something