Cloves are variously used as a spice. They are often stuck into pickled fruits, as peaches, apples, apricots. The opening quotation from Shakespeare suggests such a use with lemons. Some persons acquire an inelegant and undesirable habit of chewing cloves. The pungent oil deadens or benumbs the nerves of taste and touch and the persistent mastication of cloves, is said to produce an excessive development of fibrous tissue of the liver, a condition akin to "nutmeg liver" which shall be referred to in our next paper. Other parts of the clove-tree are also used occasionally, as for instance the flower stalks known as clove stalks. They possess the odor and taste of cloves but in a lesser degree. Formerly the leaves were also used but it is said that they do not now appear in commerce. The dried fruit known as mother of cloves is used more or less. They contain far less oil than cloves and are comparatively less valuable. Even the wood of the tree has been used as a spice. The dried and ground flower stalk, the fruits and the wood are often used to adulterate ground cloves. We would therefore advise housewives to purchase the cloves and grind them at home. It is reported that cloves have been adulterated with false cloves made from starch pressed into the form of cloves and roasted. It is, however, not at all likely that such a practice is carried on to any great extent. Sometimes cloves are placed on the market from which the oil has been extracted. The cultivated cloves are richer in essential oil than the native cloves. The Zanzibar cloves are quite large. The principal market varieties are English cloves, Amboyne cloves, Bourbon cloves, Cayenne cloves, Zanzibar cloves, and others. [Illustration: FROM KOEHLER'S MEDIZINAL-PFLANZEN. CLOVE.] EXPLANATION OF PLATE. _A_, flowering branch, nearly natural size; 1, floral bud; 2, floral bud in longitudinal section; 3, stamens; 4, pollen grains; 5, ovary in transverse section; 6, fruit, about natural size; 7, fruit in transverse section; 8, embryo; 9, part of embryo. A VEIN OF HUMOR. ELANORA KINSLEY MARBLE. Not only human beings, it is said, but all other animals of earth, air, and water have their play spells. To the question of how man can know this, one can only say that man being also animal, must certainly understand something of the nature of his lower brethren. Our mental composition is of the same substance as theirs, with a certain superstructure of reasoning faculty, however, which has enabled us to become their masters. The various emotions and faculties, such as love, fear, curiosity, memory, imitation, jealousy, etc., of which man boasts, are to be found, often in a highly developed state, among the lower animals, so that it is not at all surprising that among both birds and mammals we find individual species possessing a more or less keen sense of humor.