10 VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS. moistened by rain for several months in the year: its branches seemed dead and dried, but when the trunk was pierced, the sweet nourishing milk flowed freely. Nearly allied to this in usefulness is the Bread Fruit Tree, of the Sandwich Isles; where the fruit which supplies the place of bread is thus prepared :—when about as large as a moderately-sized vegetable marrow, it is cut, and in its unripe state is baked in an oven; the outer crust is then cut off, and a thin one remains; the inside is soft and white, very similar to the appearance of new bread. I would next invite your attention to the tribe of palms, the pride of the forest, and the most beautiful trees in the vegetable kingdom. The most important to man are the Date Palms, the Cocoa-Nut Palm, and the Cabbage Tree. The peculiarity of this species is the tall, unbranching stem, crowned with elegant foliage, composed of a few immense leaves, which frequently measure twelve or fifteen feet in length. Of the tea tree, the sugar cane, the rice, the spice plants, the vine, the olive, the fig, the orange, and many others, all contributing to the support, nourishment, and luxury of man, much might be said, but I must not here enlarge on the prolific theme. To commerce we owe the enjoyment of them in this more temperate climate, and civilisation has taught us the means of naturalizing the productions of distant lands. In the year 1500, this country was supplied with vegetables from the Netherlands, there being then no kitchen gardens known. Turnips and carrots are said to have been brought from France, cauliflowers from Cyprus, artichokes from Sicily, cherries and filberts from Asia Minor, the peach and walnut from Persia, the plum from Syria, the quince from Sidon, the best varieties of apples VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS. 11 and pears from Greece, the apricot from Armenia, which all, according to the will of the gracious Donor, annually "yield their fruit after their kind," and proclaim aloud the goodness of the Creator, who, by the wonderful provision of each having "its seed in itself," continues without interruption the work of propagation. This seed is contained in vessels of various shapes:-in the poppy, it is globular; in the pea and bean, long; in the pear, apple, &c. pulpy, with the seeds enclosed in a case; in the gooseberry, juicy; in the strawberry, the seeds are scattered upon the surface of the berry. Thus you see the seed is borne by the parent till arrived at maturity, when it is scattered upon the earth, whose fertile bosom readily receives the promise of the future plant; and as this generally occurs in the autumn, the winter snow, descending upon the tender seed, protects it from the frost, its severest enemy, and by the nourishment it imparts assists it in bursting forth, and sending out its little feeble shoot, which the returning sun of spring warms and invigorates, and in due time enables it to appear with all the presumption of an aspiring plant. Before I bring this part of our subject to a close, I would remark the singular fact of the great difference of time required to germinate different seeds. Wheat will sprout in three days, barley in four; spinach, beans, and mustard, in three; lettuce, in four; melons, cucumbers, and cress, in five; radishes and beet in six; cabbage in ten; parsley requires forty to fifty days; almonds, chestnuts, and peaches, one year; while the rose, hawthorn, and filbert, are two years. Far, very far, my dear young friends, might I proceed in this interesting subject; I feel I can say, with the great poet, 12 BOTANICAL CONSIDERATIONS. "These are thy glorious works, Parent of Good! These thy lowest works-declare Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine." Milton's Paradise Lost, line 158. The heathen could admire the works of nature; they could descant, in glowing terms, upon her sublimity; but it is to the Christian alone that she appears in her true colours: he beholds her as proceeding from her Creator's hands; fair and lovely, every flower, every glowing hue, every penciled leaf, every provision for futurity, whispers in his car, "My Father made them all;" and he looks up with feelings too great for utterance, while he mentally exclaims, "Make me a plant of thy right hand's planting," "a living branch of the living vine, even of Jesus, the great First Cause of all, the Upholder of the universe, the express image of the Invisible Jehovah." May this be your experience, and may the perusal of this volume continually afford you that interest and pleasure I so ardently desire, and which the great subjects of which it treats are ever calculated to convey. CHAPTER II. The Work of the Fourth Day-Solar System-Planetary Bodies— Effects of Solar Light-Time-Seasons. As I conclude my young friends are willing to proceed still deeper in the consideration of the wonderful and mighty process of creation, the opening subject of the present chapter is of the sublimest character. "For the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy work." The Almighty fiat was again. heard throughout the universe, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of heaven, to give light upon the earth." Hence the arrangement and formation of our planetary system, "which was to divide our day into the two natural distinctions of visible light and succeeding darkness, become the cause of our seasons, and suggest and govern our computations of time."* Nearly six thousand years have elapsed since the in *Sharon Turner's Sacred History, vol. i. p. 36. fluence of the sun was first felt on this terrestrial globe, since the motion of the planets began, and days, and months, and years commenced their course. For almost that space have the two great lights shone forth at their respective periods; the sun, the greater light, never failing on the return of each successive morning to gild the radiant east, while the lowly moon, attended by myriads of stars, supplies his absence during the continuation of the darksome night. In order to render the study of the celestial bodies more in accordance with the conception of my readers, we will consider briefly that bright and glorious page which the starry sky unfolds. The Sun, as the centre of the system, stands alone in his own unclouded majesty. "His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." Psalm xix. 6. Thus in few words we behold the universal action of this great luminary, dispensing everywhere light, and life, and heat. Its appearance in the heavens is as a ball of intense light, too great for the human eye to bear unless screened by artificial means. Nearest to this bright orb, and yet 37,000,000 of miles distant, Mercury performs his revolution in nearly eighty-eight days, and with Venus, the brightest of the planets, and next in distance,* attends continually upon the sun, "from whose vicinity they never depart beyond a certain limit." We sometimes see them to the east of the sun, and sometimes to the west of it. In the former case they appear conspicuous over the western horizon just after sunset, and are called evening stars in the latter, they rise before that luminary in * Venus is distant 68,000,000 of miles, and revolves in rather less than 225 days. |