"Just so; then, as you have heard me so patiently, I will trouble you with another application of my sermon. Do what you are doing _well_. Don't let your observation be too cursory. Don't be Jacks of all trades and masters of none. This district is teeming with bird, insect, and animal life. You boys have peculiar opportunities for learning and discovering all that is rare and interesting. You are sharp, young, and active, and nothing can escape you. Now is the time for you to store up facts which will always be valuable. Buy yourselves notebooks; put down everything in writing which seems to you to be strange and noteworthy, and don't trust to your memories. But above all, take up some one branch of study and stick to it. It is well for you to know a little of everything, but it is better for you to know a great deal of one thing. Therefore I should advise each of you to take up a line that suits him and to pay particular attention to it. Thus you, Frank, may take up Ornithology; you, Dick, should go in for Entomology; and Jimmy, why should you not take up Botany?" The boys quite concurred in the justice of his observations, but Jimmy said: "There is nothing I should like better than to know something of Botany, but there seems so much to learn that I am almost afraid to begin." "Oh, nonsense," exclaimed Mr. Meredith; "let me give you a first lesson in it now. I suppose you know the names of all the most common flowers; but just look at their beauty. See how this hedge-bank is yellow with primroses, and yonder you see the faint blue of the violets peeping from their bed of dark-green leaves, and here is the white blossom of a strawberry, which I pluck to show you of what a flower consists. First there is the root, through which it draws its nourishment from the earth. Then there is the stem, and on the top of that is this green outer whorl or circle of leaves, which is called the calyx. Within the calyx is the corolla, which is formed of petals, which in this case are of a beautiful white. The corolla is the part in which the colour and beauty of a flower generally resides. Within the corolla are the stamens, and within the stamens are the pistils. The stamens and the pistils are the organs of reproduction, and the yellow dust or pollen which you see on most flowers is the medium by which the seeds are fertilized. Now this flower which I have just plucked is the wood-sorrel. Notice its threefold emerald-green leaf and the delicate white flower with the purple veins. It is pretty, is it not? See, if I strike it roughly, it shrinks and folds up something like a sensitive plant. It is a capital weather-glass. At the approach of rain both its flowers and leaves close up, and even if a cloud passes over the sun the flowers will close a little; and, finally, its leaves taste of a pleasant acid. There, you will have had enough of my lecture for the present, but I should like to tell you more about flowers some other time."