The white alyssum, small and fair, The red camelia’s blushing dyes, The jasmine’s golden blossoms rare, The larkspur, blue as summer skies, The sweet narcissus’s yellow blooms, The zinnia, with its violet rays, The pink, with all its rich perfumes, The crowning charm of August days. Without the snowflakes softly fall, An airy mist from cloud and sky, Within, their perfume over all, The buds in rosy fragrance lie. The pale acacia’s tinted gleams, The white carnation’s heart of gold, The phlox that grows beside the streams That gem the forests dim and old. I wonder when life’s spring is past, And snows are falling soft as now, When autumn glories fade at last, And frosts lie thick upon the bough, If some true deed that I have wrought, May, like the flowers, its blooms unclose, Some fair and unforgotten thought Grow grand beneath life’s winter snows. SCIENCE AND COMMON SENSE. By CHARLES KINGSLEY. The scientific method needs no definition; for it is simply the exercise of common sense. It is not a peculiar, unique, professional, or mysterious process of the understanding; but the same which all men employ, from the cradle to the grave, in forming correct conclusions. Every one who knows the philosophic writings of Mr. John Stuart Mill, will be familiar with this opinion. But to those who have no leisure to study him, I should recommend the reading of Professor Huxley’s third lecture on the origin of species. In that he shows, with great logical skill, as well as with some humor, how the man who, on rising in the morning finds the parlor-window open, the spoons and teapot gone, the mark of a dirty hand on the window-sill, and that of a hob-nailed boot outside, and comes to the conclusion that someone has broken open the window, and stolen the plate, arrives at that hypothesis—for it is nothing more—by a long and complex train of inductions and deductions of just the same kind as those which, according to the Baconian philosophy, are to be used for investigating the deepest secrets of Nature. This is true, even of those sciences which involve long mathematical calculations. In fact, the stating of the problem to be solved is the most important element in the calculation; and that is so thoroughly a labor of common sense that an utterly uneducated man may, and often does, state an abstruse problem clearly and correctly; seeing what ought to be proved, and perhaps how to prove it, though he may be unable to work the problem out for want of mathematical knowledge.