Among all the lily kind, such devices for storing up useful material, either in bulbs or in the very similar organs known as corms, are extremely common. As a consequence, many of them produce unusually large and showy flowers. Among our lilies we can boast of such beautiful blossoms as the fritillary, the wild hyacinth, the meadow-saffron, and the two pretty squills; while in our gardens the tiger lilies, tulips, tuberoses, and many others belong to the same handsome bulbous group. Closely allied families give us the bulb-bearing narcissus, daffodil, snowdrop, amarylis, and Guernsey lily; the crocus, gladiolus, iris, and corn-flag; while the neighboring tribe of orchids, most of which have tubers, probably produce more ornamental flowers than any other family of plants in the whole world. Among a widely different group we get other herbs which lay by rich stores of starch, or similar nutritious substances, in thickened underground branches, known as tubers; such, for example, are the potato and the Jerusalem artichoke. Sometimes the root itself is the storehouse for the accumulated food-stuffs, as in the dahlia, the carrot, the radish, and the turnip. In all these cases, the plant obviously derives benefit from the habit which it has acquired of hiding away its reserve fund beneath the ground, where it is much less likely to be discovered and eaten by its animal foes.—_“Knowledge” Library._ * * * * * History presents to us the life of nations, and finds nothing to write about except wars and popular tumults: the years of peace appear only as short pauses, interludes, a mark here and there. And just so is the life of individuals a continued course of warfare, not at all in a metaphorical way of speaking, with want or ennui, but in reality too with his fellow men. He finds everywhere adversaries—lives in continual struggles—and dies at last with arms in his hands. Yet, after all, as our bodies must burst asunder if the weight of the atmosphere were to be withdrawn from it, so, too, if the heavy burden of want, misery, calamities, and the non-success of our exertions, were taken away from the life of men, their arrogance would swell out, if not to the length of explosion, at all events to the exhibition of the most unbridled folly—nay, to madness. So that every man at all times requires a certain _quantum_ of cares and sorrow, or necessities, as a ship does ballast, to enable him to go forward steadily and in a direct line.—_Schopenhauer._ MIGRATIONS ON FOOT. By REV. J. G. WOOD, M.A. We have to consider those creatures who are deprived of food by climate, but who are able to pass to other places where food still exists. Travel for this purpose is called migration, and it may be accomplished in two ways, namely, upon the earth by means of feet, or over it by means of wings. We will first take migration on foot.