"The foolish man," says Emerson, "wonders at the unusual, the wise man at the usual;" while Lowell more wittily words the same truth: "We think lightly of nature's penny shows, and estimate what we see by the cost of the ticket".

With what dismay would the average hay-maker be likely to open his eyes at all that Mr. Ruskin finds to say about so insignificant objects as grass blossoms: "Minute, granular, feathery or downy seed vessels, mingling brown punctuation and dusty tremors of dancing grain with the bloom of the nearer fields; and casting softness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away; mysterious evermore, not only with dew of the morning, or mirage at noon, but with the shaking threads of fine arborescence, each a little belfry of grain-bells all a-chime!"

It is an ignorance incompatible with their information on other subjects that intelligent people often display in speaking of even common garden flowers. They use such terms as "I've seen some like those before;" "Mrs. M. has flowers like that one;" "This white one is sweeter than that blue kind;" or to point out trees by the roadside as " the tallest" or "short one," or "giant" in order to designate the object of their thought. That the most marked characteristic of a plant or tree has escaped their observation appears in their surprise when their attention is attracted to it by a more observant companion of nature. Having eyes, they seem to see not; having ears, they hear to little or no purpose.

No study is more attractive, nor more easily pursued than that of out-door botany - "out-door" here being used to distinguish its actual application to plant life from the mere in-door study of the text-book. If gardening is good for the physical needs of frail men and women, the intelligent acquaintanceship with vegetable structure, history and growth is good for distracted mental conditions. No high education is necessary upon which to begin it. Everyone is equipped to glean rich rewards from the simple pages of nature's book. Any child old enough to gather his hands full of golden dandelions is ready for a primary lesson.

A "Home Culture Society," composed of the ladies of a country neighborhood, in the early stages of its existence, chose botany as the special study for one season, with results so salient as to lead me to recommend it to others. A part of the members had taken botany in their school days, but the majority of them could not have told what a cotyledon means, much less had ever given a thought to the differing traits of plants bearing netted and parallel-veined leaves, or to the peculiar provisions of plants within themselves for self-protection and propagation. A new world, fresh, wholesome and vigorous, opened to their minds, overtaxed with the vexing endlessness of routine duties; and to their eyes fair objects took on unaccustomed interest.

"I never shall forget," says one member, "one stormy April day, in particular, when our club met. We came together fortnightly to compare notes, read papers prepared on topics, and give verbal outlines and reports on the work assigned in our text-book, which was Gray's School and Field Book of Botany. Our lesson was on buds, and the collection of bare twigs and wet branches we women brought together that day would have borne convincing testimony to the most astute opposer that we were both earnest and enthusiastic in something out of the line of topics commonly ascribed to congregating females. We confined our gossiping to a harmless verbal and actual dissection of the bud family. We discussed if they were terminal, axillary, accessory or adventitious, etc., much to our profit and nobody's hurt".

As the season advanced, telling its old, old story of the birth and growth of plant life, a freshening impetus came to the club through the successive unfoldings of germ to bud, bud to blossom, blossom to fruit; a quickened interest came to the eyes of those women for the things of voiceless life about them, a brighter glow grew on cheeks more exposed to out-door life, and a warmer sympathy each felt for the other members, while a new catechism of questions was put into the mouths of the younger members of the families represented by these home students. Never again can it be said of them :

"In vain, through every changeful year, Did nature lead him (her) as before".

Michigan. Jenny Buell.