Wild Flowers

and, at the same time, most accessible of God's

created works. The wild flower is the earliest thing of beauty which every child that treads a green field, or wanders along a green lane, takes to itself; it loves the flowers as it were by instinct; and this love is the best and surest portal to the memory; cultivate it, and you will find how quickly the young will learn and remember, not the names merely of their favourites, but much of their botanical history, provided only that these things are taught, not as a school-room task, full of long names and technicalities, but as the pieasant out-door lesson, in which the affections are engaged as well as the intellect. Thus may be laid in the young mind a love for the natural sciences which will never forsake it, and which may, in after years, prove a solace and resource amid the cares of life's battle, or, perchance, a real service in that battle itself. Nay, more, the time is coming fast when no man or woman will be considered properly educated who is ignorant of the leading facts at least of the natural sciences, and when the knowledge and study of these natural revelations from God will rank second only to knowledge of the higher revelation He has given us of Himself.

I send on its mission the fourth edition of my york, improved both in matter and illustration, hopeful that it may add to any little good which has been achieved by its predecessors.

SPENCER THOMSON.

GRANGEWOOD LODGE, BURTON-ON-TRENT.