[1] _Atlantic and Transatlantic Sketches, Afloat and Ashore._ By Captain Mackinnon, R.N. 2 vols. Colburn & Co. 1852. [2] The _America_ lost her laurels at Cowes a few weeks ago. MRS GRIMSHAWE'S TREATISE ON HOLDFASTS. I am ready to maintain, against all assailants of the position, that the person who can feel so deep an interest in any of the works of God as to find, in the investigation of them, employment for time which might otherwise hang a little heavily on hand, and occupation of an innocent and even of a useful nature for an active mind, has a decided advantage over one who has no such resource. And I further maintain, that there is not one single object in created nature, from the drop of ditch-water which occupies the attention of Herr von Creep-crawl, up to the 'serried host' of angels and archangels who inhabit the realms of light, which does not present matter worthy of the study and attention of an inquiring and intelligent mind. Having delivered this defiance, I shall now ask my readers to take another walk round my garden, and examine the climbers which cover my walls, and listen to my Treatise on Holdfasts, as I call those appendages of plants which assist them in climbing.[3] The very first specimen to which we come, is one of that very pretty tribe the _Clematideae_, the _Clematis montana_, which is closely covering a wall of ten feet high, and at least twenty in width, thence throwing out its branches, extending itself over the adjacent wall of the house, and occasionally sending a stray shoot or two to adorn my neighbour's garden. Now, how do those slight, long stems, which stretch, some of them twenty or thirty feet from the parent stalk, support and arrange themselves so as to preserve a neat and ornamental appearance without my having had the least trouble in training them? If you gather one of those loose branches, you will see that it has no tendril of any kind, or other apparent means of support; but this, like all others of the clematideae or clematis tribe, possesses a power of twisting the leaf-stalk round a wire, twig, or anything else that comes in its way, so as to tie the plant to the support with as firm a knot as could be made with a piece of string; and after thus encircling the wire, it returns the leaf to its former position, with the upper side outwards, exactly as it was before. Some of the clematis tribe make this fulcrum from one part of the leaf-stalk, and some from another. In that which we are examining, it is formed from the lowest part next the main stalk of the plant. In the wild clematis (_C. vitalba_)--that kind which runs so freely over hedges and thickets in the southern counties, adorning the country in winter with snowy tufts of feathers, formed by its seed-vessels--a part of the stalk between two pair of the leaflets forms this twist; whilst in the sweet-scented garden-clematis, other parts of the stem give the support: but it is always by means of some portion or other of this