last unbroken for days; and what struck our companion as a sudden and mysterious addition to the height of the plants was merely the effect of their having gathered themselves together--contracted all their parts into the least possible compass--thus assuming an upright pyramidal form, as best enabling them to withstand the assaults of the approaching storm. Plants of less health and vigour would, according to our theory, have shown the same sensitiveness in the circumstances, but in a manner not so immediate, and to a degree less marked and striking. Our companion of that day, who got a thorough drouking, as we say in Scotland, on his way home that afternoon, writes us with some humour that "as he has always had a great regard for potatoes on the table, both mashed and 'balled,' in their 'jackets,' so in future will he, in acknowledgment of their infallibility in the matter of weather changes, view them with respect even in the field." It should be stated, by the way, that this hygrometrical property in the potato plant rapidly diminishes in sensitiveness as the haulm increases in height and strength, as if it felt that when approaching its full growth it could afford very much to disregard such weather changes as are incident to the mid-summer season; but the reader who has the opportunity may verify all we have said upon the subject for himself. Another plant still more remarkable for hygrometric properties is the common carline, or carlen thistle, the Carlina vulgaris of botanists. It is common enough in some districts of Scotland, though those who do not know it already need not be in the least ambitious of the honour of its acquaintance, unless indeed from a purely scientific point of view, for the carline, wherever it appears, is almost always the infallible sign of a poor soil, miserably farmed. The species receives its name of Carlina from an old story that Charlemagne introduced it into Europe on account of some valuable medicinal qualities attributed to it; its virtues in this respect having been revealed, it was said, to Carolus Magnus by an angel in a vision of the night during the prevalence of a deadly plague. Certain preparations of its roots and leaves were for centuries afterwards held of great virtue in such internal complaints as demanded violent purgatives for their removal; and to this day it is, we believe, held in great repute by herbalists for the cure of vertigo, headache, and other cerebral diseases. As a weather prognosticator, it is perhaps unequalled by any other British plant, the sensitiveness of its involucral scales to the slightest weather changes being so extraordinary as to have from very early times attracted the attention and aroused the wonderment of those unacquainted with the fact that similar properties, in a greater or less degree, are common to all plants and flowers--to the whole vegetable kingdom indeed. The carline has a stem of some eight