For the cultivator of the soil, whether farmer, gardener, or fruit grower, botany, of course, is the queen of sciences--though he may not safely remain ignorant of the others mentioned, which form a brilliant court for his queen. In no direction has science lately proved itself so indispensable as in the application of botanical knowledge to the improvement of agricultural operations of all kinds. In France, always one of the richest of lands in this respect, the government has since the war made special provisions for placing instruction in botany and plant physiology, and the results of all advances in the science of the vegetable kingdom, before the pupils of the primary as well as those of the secondary and higher schools. Botanical reading and study are encouraged in every possible way. One of the most significant propositions for the extension of this educational reform consists in the suggestion that the schools in the country districts give much more attention to the various branches of botanical knowledge than the city schools do, for the purpose not only of supplying instruction that will be of fundamental practical use to the young people who grow up on the land and are to make its cultivation their life's occupation, but also of stimulating a love of the country for itself, its scenes, its atmosphere, its society, its amusements, and its simple, beautiful, and healthful ways of life. As your train, or car, rushes through a rock cut where the roadway has been carried, without change of level or grade, through the round back of a hill, you may happen to see on the side walls of the excavation curious striations, or cross checkings, of the rock surface, or alternate strata, or layers, of varying color and texture; some composed of smooth-faced stone, of a dark, uniform color, and others of coarse granular masses of variegated hue, some of whose particles flash like microscopic mirrors in the glancing sunlight that grazes the top of the cut. Here, then, you are plunged into the wonder world of the geologist and the mineralogist, the subject of one of the most interesting of our volumes. That man must indeed be dull of intellect who does not feel a thrill of interest at the sight of these signs and inscriptions, written by the ancient hand of nature in the rocks, and telling, in language far more easily decipherable than the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the story of the gradual growth of this round planet on whose surface we are confined, like flies or ants, as it rotates and revolves in empty space, circling with us around a star, ninety-three million miles away, called the sun, which saw the birth of our world and has ever since kept it warmed and lighted with its rays.