* * * * * [Illustration: OAKS.] Out of these three great families of plants, in their almost endless variety of size, form, and colour, it has pleased the Great Author of Nature to form all the vegetation which beautifies this earth, from the lofty Palm--which, from its grateful freshness and the beauty of its structure, seems almost as if possessed of more than vegetative life, to the Algæ, which form "the pool's green mantle"--from the gigantic and "storm-defying" Oak, with its green foliage spreading out far above, and throwing its welcome shade around, to defend from the sun's rays the gentle deer who pasture on the herbage beneath--to the grass and clover, and the sweet-smelling wild flowers at their feet-- "Daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath,--pale primroses That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength"-- form inexhaustible themes on which to exercise our faculties of admiration, and which serve admirably to minister to those wants which, without doubt, were given to us that we might derive pleasure from their being thus beautifully gratified--themes for the pencil of the artist, who "holds, as it were, the mirror up to nature," and the architect, when he designed his vistas of slender columns spreading out into and supporting roofs of tracery, might well be supposed to have had in his "mind's eye" some beautiful recollection of the arcades of Nature's palaces in the sombre forests, where the twisted trunks of the trees, the fretwork of their branches, and the leafy covering formed by their leaves, supply all the requisites of a grand and lofty temple, fit for the worship of that great First Cause who formed them. [Illustration: FOREST SCENE.] THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--ANIMALCULÆ FOUND IN STAGNANT WATER. A, Cyclops Quadracornis. B, Anguillula. Fluviatilis. C, Actinophrys. Sol. D, Coleps Hirtus. E, Vorticella. F, Amboeba princeps. G, Acineta mystacina. H, Oxytrycha. I, Triophthalamus dorsalis. J, Polyarthra. ]