the air-orchis, which, if hung up in a room, will continue to unfold, for several successive weeks, its fragrant and delicate flowers. It is a native of the East, and is peculiarly beautiful in China; but it does not attain perfection in this country.

The orchideous plants (Orchidea) are very similar in the structure of their flowers, and easily known by a person acquainted with any one plant of the tribe. They are found in all parts of the world, except those bordering on the Frozen Zone. The elegant perfume of Vanilla is extracted from one of them. They are, however, generally rather an ornamental than useful tribe of plants; and we may infer that they have been scattered over the world, by the great Creator, chiefly for the purpose of affording delight to the eye of man, or of supplying food to the bee and butterfly, and other free creatures of the air, to whom God giveth their meat in due season.

CHAPTER XXI.

BELL-FLOWERS-HEATH-LAND-HEATH FLOWERS-HAREBELL DIFFERENT FORMS OF LEAVES ON THE SAME PLANT-NETTLE-LEAVED BELL-FLOWER-GIANT BELL

FLOWER RAMPION

VENUS'S LOOKING-GLASS.

PYRAMIDAL BELL-FLOWER

Their groves o' sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon,
Where bright beaming summers exalt the perfume,
Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' green bracken,
Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom:

Far dearer to me yon humble broom bowers,

Where the bluebell and gowan lurk lowly unseen;
For there, lightly tripping amang the wild flowers,
A listening the linnet, aft wanders my Jean.

Burns.

THE zephyrs are sporting with the flowers on the heath land, and that wide tract which, during a great part of the year, is remarkable for its waste and barren appearance, is richly clothed,

during summer, with its own peculiar blossoms. The loneliness often experienced by those who have to traverse a portion of heath ground, where no tree or hedge-perhaps not even a solitary cottage-serves as a landmark to the wanderer, has led us to think of the heath as a cheerless spot. Oftentimes, however, its wide carpet presents a scene of wild and rich beauty, and the purplish-red colour of the bells of the heather, and the sweet perfume of the golden furze and broom, and other flowers, and the constant humming of the wild bees, which, so long as the sky is unclouded, are hovering in swarms about it, delight the senses of those who, amid the scenes of nature, have an eye to mark, an ear to listen, and a heart to love.

The pretty low-branched shrub, the common ling, is bright with its reddish flowers, and so plentiful are they, that the Icelander would say they threatened a severe winter. The purple or rose-coloured blossoms of our native heaths are growing too in large and thickly-clustered patches. The name of the former plant — ling

(Callúna) is derived from the Greek word to cleanse or adorn; whether because it causes the wilderness to blossom, or that because, as Sir J. E. Smith observes, it merits that title from the domestic uses to which it is applied where its twigs are manufactured into brooms. Professor Hooker says of it, that it makes an excellent edging to garden plots, and will bear clipping as well as box.

But we do not, in the southern parts of Great Britain, witness the beauties which tracts of heath-land present in the northern portion of our island, nor the services they render to those who inhabit their neighbourhood. The Highlanders make their beds of the green or dried heather, and the hardy and simple mode of life of these mountaineers, and their constant exposure to the free and invigorating air of their native hills, render their couch a more certain place of repose than is the curtained down of the luxurious.

How little do they who, rising at noon-time, spend the day in listless indolence, or in the

frivolous pursuits of fashion, know how many of the charms of existence are lost to them! To them the wide-stretching landscape, the lone walk along the meadow or river-side, offer no delight. They are unenlivened by all those "skyey influences" which can raise the spirits to an overflow of exhilaration, and give a corresponding spring to the untiring footstep. The odour of the wild, if it greet their languid senses, needs the stimulus of greater fragrance, and equals not in their esteem the odour of the perfume which is borne to them from the vase of the distiller. Weary they are, yet they do not experience the fatigue induced by exertion, which makes the hardest bed agreeable and refreshing, and invites to a light slumber, unscared by the visitations of restlessness or terror. They lose in early life that freshness and vigour of feeling which a constant intercourse with nature serves to continue; they cannot taste the chief delights of poetry; they miss the music of many voices, and pass away life unconscious of the common sources of