The lair in which the female brings forth her young is usually in a shallow cavern on the face of some inaccessible cliff or ledge of rocks. In the southern states, Audubon says, where there are no caves or rocks, the lair of the puma is generally in a very dense thicket or in a canebrake. It is a rude sort of bed of sticks, weeds, leaves and grasses. The number of cubs is from two to five. In captivity two usually are born, but sometimes only one. THE HOLLY TREE. O reader! hast thou ever stood to see The Holly tree? The eye that contemplates it, well perceives Its glossy leaves, Ordered by an intelligence so wise As might confound the atheist's sophistries. Below a circling fence its leaves are seen Wrinkled and keen; No grazing cattle through their prickly round Can reach to wound; But as they grow where nothing is to fear, Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear. I love to view these things with curious eyes, And moralize; And in this wisdom of the Holly tree Can emblem see Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, One which may profit in the after-time. Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear Harsh and austere, To those who on my leisure would intrude Reserved and rude, Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be Like the high leaves upon the Holly tree. And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know, Some harshness show, All vain asperities I day by day Would wear away, Till the smooth temper of my age should be Like the high leaves upon the Holly tree. And as when all the summer trees are seen So bright and green, The Holly leaves a sober hue display Less bright than they, But when the bare and wintry woods we see, What then so cheerful as the Holly tree? --_Robert Southey._ THE LEMON. DR. ALBERT SCHNEIDER, Northwestern University School of Pharmacy, Chicago. The lemon is the fruit of a small tree from ten to fifteen feet high. It is not particularly beautiful, being rather shrubby in its appearance. It is an evergreen, bearing leaves, flowers, and fruit all the year round. The flowers occur singly in the axils of the leaves. The calyx is persistent, that is, it does not drop off like the corolla, and may be found attached to the base of the fruit. The corolla consists of five spreading petals of a purplish-pink color. The lemons of the market are from cultivated plants of which there is a large number of varieties. These cultivated varieties or forms took their origin from the wild lemon trees native in northern India, in the mountain forests of the southern Himalayas, in Kumoan, and Sikkim.