more than met the eye, I could throw my arms about them, and lay my hot cheek on their noble trunks. It was not till then I knew how tired I was. I could not delay long with my old friends. I do not remember anything about the getting home, save that the dogs who had so guarded my garden of the Hesperides, and stood between me and the fulfilment of my desire, now that I had accomplished the feat, let me return in silence. I was very weary; but I was thoroughly contented and satisfied. And now one of my old friends was laid low! How he came to his end I know not. But I felt that he had died, not that he had been cut down; and for a moment a strange, weird melancholy stole over me at finding I had outlived a noble tree. It seemed as if I must be very old to have done that, and that it was hardly natural. I remember I asked myself then, at the very time of my _culte_ of the pine‐trees, and I have repeated the question since, whether there was not in my feelings something of that dim instinct which binds man in an obscure affinity with all nature, down to its lower strata and its primeval developments. As man contains something of all in his own being, so must he have a sympathy with all; for, as has been wisely said, man is a universe in himself, with another universe to wait on him. Most people have a special attraction to some race of animals. Some have a love for, and a power over, the horse and the dog greater than others; and this not always nor only as the results of habit, but as a natural gift. Certain flowers have a peculiar attraction for many people, in preference to others equal in beauty and perfume. All these preferences may point to hidden laws of affinity, of which we know very little more than the bare fact that all in creation finds its portion in each man, and that in his own single self he is chemical, vegetable, animal, and spiritual. I am afraid to say any more, lest my readers should think I believe we are in general descended from the little open‐mouthed sea‐squirts called ascidians, but that I claim for myself in particular some higher origin in the shape of a conifer great‐ grandfather. I assure them it is nothing of the kind. With regard to my sympathy with animals, of course, being an old maid, I ought to prefer cats and gray parrots. On the contrary, I prefer dogs, and Frank is the only gray parrot I ever thought of loving.