when they reported that they had seen wool growing on trees as well as the sun in the north at noonday. We perceive in these days that this report of the voyage is the very proof that they had really gone where they professed.

The cotton plant is a shrub which naturally grows to be about eight or ten feet high; but where it is grown for use it is kept down to the height of a currant bush. There are thirteen different kinds, one of which is a creeper and another a tree, but the most useful sort is the shrub. It bears a pretty yellow flower, with a dark eye, and this gives place to a pod, where the seeds are embedded in the soft white substance which we call cotton wool. You know it, I daresay, and keep your treasures in it, your tender shells, or little glass curiosities; or you peep in at brooches lying on a bed of it; or, possibly, if you ever scalded or burnt your finger, it has been packed up in it to keep out the air. This cotton wool has, however, been carefully cleaned, and all the seeds picked out; I have seen some, as it came fresh from the pod, looking much rougher and less white. Perhaps, however, this acquired its dirt in the packing, for it comes to England in great canvas sacks, two or three yards long and more than a yard in width. A man gets into this great bag, which is kept open by being fastened to posts, and is supplied with cotton, which he treads down as hard as possible, trampling on it, and forcing it into every corner, till he rises gradually on it to the top, and light as cotton is, one bag holds three or four hundred pounds.

Cotton is grown in almost every hot country, in so many indeed that it is not worth while to count them up. It is manufactured in great quantities in England, and those children are happy who have only to do with

never been able to find out the reason of the name holyoak; I am inclined to believe it is two or three Chinese words run together. The tuft of anthers and stigmas are very handsome when the flower has not been doubled, and all grow out of a sort of rounded, yet flattish germ. When the flower is faded the tuft shrivels up, and the germ, packed up in the five calyx leaflets, swells into a shape a good deal like a large button, which some children call a cheese. If cut in two the parts are so regularly arranged as to be like a star.

Children like to eat the cheeses of our English mallow, which is nearly related to the holyoak, and the plant used to be much esteemed for use in medicine, mallow leaves being thought very healing. We have three wild sorts— the common, a lilac, striped darkly; the musk mallow, a pretty pale pink, its leaves much divided; and the dwarf, white, striped with lilac, much haunting dusty waysides. There is a handsome garden flower called the Malope, a very dark crimson, coming from the Mauritius; a shrub called the Althea; and a genus named Hibiscus, to which belongs a great favourite of mine, the African Hibiscus, called Black-eyed Susan, a primrose-coloured flower, with a very deep dark eye. The seeds of this genus do not grow into cheeses, but are round, and enclosed within a case. All the tribe love sunshine, and shut up their petals at night or in bad weather.

We must not leave this order till we have mentioned two plants that we have never seen, though none, except the wheat, are of such daily use to us. I daresay you scarcely have a garment on at this moment some part of which is not composed of the first of these. The cotton plant, I mean; the plant which caused the first Phoenicians who sailed round the Cape to be taken for deceivers

We

when they reported that they had seen wool growing on trees as well as the sun in the north at noonday. perceive in these days that this report of the voyage is the very proof that they had really gone where they professed.

The cotton plant is a shrub which naturally grows to be about eight or ten feet high; but where it is grown for use it is kept down to the height of a currant bush. There are thirteen different kinds, one of which is a creeper and another a tree, but the most useful sort is the shrub. It bears a pretty yellow flower, with a dark eye, and this gives place to a pod, where the seeds are embedded in the soft white substance which we call cotton wool. You know it, I daresay, and keep your treasures in it, your tender shells, or little glass curiosities; or you peep in at brooches lying on a bed of it; or, possibly, if you ever scalded or burnt your finger, it has been packed up in it to keep out the air. This cotton wool has, however, been carefully cleaned, and all the seeds picked out; I have seen some, as it came fresh from the pod, looking much rougher and less white. Perhaps, however, this acquired its dirt in the packing, for it comes to England in great canvas sacks, two or three yards long and more than a yard in width. A man gets into this great bag, which is kept open by being fastened to posts, and is supplied with cotton, which he treads down as hard as possible, trampling on it, and forcing it into every corner, till he rises gradually on it to the top, and light as cotton is, one bag holds three or four hundred pounds.

Cotton is grown in almost every hot country, in so many indeed that it is not worth while to count them up. It is manufactured in great quantities in England, and those children are happy who have only to do with

the wearing instead of the spinning and weaving. In former times poor children were dreadfully overworked, and though much has been done by law to prevent them from being kept in the cotton mills for too many hours a day, it must be a sad thing to live in the din of machinery, and in close narrow streets, instead of pleasant country homes. However, we know—

"That Love's a flower that will not die
For lack of leafy screen;

And Christian hope may cheer the eye
That ne'er saw vernal green."

And there is nothing really to prevent a manufacturing child from being as good as a country child ought to be, though there are, I am afraid, many more temptations in its way.

It is only within the last fifty years that cotton has become so cheap and common; and it is a very good thing in one way, since no one has any excuse now for not being clean, as they had when there was nothing but linen, which, though stronger and better, cannot be made so cheaply. Ask any elderly person to tell you the price that Sunday dresses used to be, and it will surprise you, though you will generally hear them say at the same time that those gowns would wear out half a dozen of such as we have now. And they were certainly much prettier and better printed, as old patch-work will testify. I could show you such roses, and such a choice pattern of strange indescribable things, as I have lain studying many an hour before it was time to get up; besides the old inherited scraps that are still kept in a bag, where they were long ago stored, as too beautiful and precious to be cut or used.

India was the first place where cotton was much used for clothing, as the name of calico, from the town of Calicut, reminds us; while muslin was named from Mosul, on the River Tigris. Though we make muslins here they are still not equal to those which are woven in India by men with a hand-loom; and afterwards embroidered, likewise by men, who walk about with the delicate muslin rolled round their body, and often so begrimed that it is wonderful how it can ever be made clean again. The Indian princes wear turbans of muslin so fine, and of such a length, that it takes twenty years to make one; and as to their wives, they expect their muslin robes to be of so fine a texture that the whole dress can be drawn through a ring.

Then Chocolate has a tribe of its own, and so has the beautiful Lime or Linden tree, with its curious flower, with a great bract, and the sweet nectar that makes them all alive with bees. Linden trees form beautiful avenues The inside of their bark forms the bass used for tying up plants in the garden.

like cathedral aisles.