greater part are herbaceous, with some shrubs. In the warm climates, there are also tall trees. Many of the leguminous plants afford excellent nourishment for man and beast; and their pods have the name of pulse.

G. I have read of persons living on pulse, but I did not know what it meant before.

T. It is frequently mentioned as part of the diet of abstemious persons. Of this kind, we eat peas, beans, and kidney, or French beans, of all which there are a variety of sorts cultivated. Other nations eat lentils and lupins, which are of this class; with severa others.

H. I remember our lupins in the garden have flowers of this kind, with pods growing in clusters. But we cultivate them only for the colour and smell.

T. But other nations eat them. Then, all the kinds of clover, or trefoil, which are so useful in feeding cattle, belong to this tribe; as do also vetches, sainfoin, and lucerne, which are used for the same purpose. These principally compose what are usually, though improperly, called in agriculture, artificial grasses.

G. Clover-flowers are as sweet as beans; but do they bear pods?

T. Yes, very short ones, with one or two seeds in each. But there is a kind called nonsuch, with a very small, yellow flower, that has a curious, twisted pod, like a snail-shell. Many of the leguminous plants are weak, and cannot support themselves; hence they are furnished with tendrils, by means of which they clasp neighbouring plants, and run up them. You know the garden peas do so to the sticks which are set in the rows with them. Some kind of vetches run in this manner up the hedges, which they decorate with their long bunches of blue or purple flowers. Tares, which are some of the slenderest of the family, do much mischief among corn by twining arcund it, and choking it.

II. What are they good for, then?

T. They are weeds, or noxious plants, with respect to us; but doubtless they have their uses in the creation. There is a kind of tares, however, which, when grown by themselves, are excellent food for cattle. Some of our papilionaceous plants are able enough to shift for themselves; for gorse or furze is of the number.

G. What, that prickly bush all covered over with yellow flowers, that overruns our common ?

T. Yes. Then there is broom, a plant as big, but without thorns, and with larger flowers. This is as frequent as furze in some places.

H. I know it grows in abundance in the Broomfield.

T. It does; but the naming of fields and places from it is a proof that it is not so common as the other.

G. We have some bushes of white broom in the shrubbery, and some trees of Spanish broom.

T. True. You have also a small tree which flowers early, and bears a great many pendent branches or yellow blossoms, that look peculiarly beautiful when intermixed with the purple lilacs.

H. I know it-laburnum.

T. Right. That is one of our class of plants, too. Then there is a large tree, with delicate little leaves, protected by long thorns, and bearing bunches of white papilionaceous flowers.

G. I know which you mean, but I cannot tell the

name.

T. It is the bastard acacia, or locust-tree, a native of America. Thus, you see, we have traced this class of plants through all sizes, from the trefoil that covers the turf, to a large tree. I should not, however, forget two others, the liquorice, and the tamarind. The liquorice, with the sweet root of which you are well acquainted, grows in the warmer countries, especially Spain, but is cultivated in England. The tama. rind is a larger spreading tree, growing in the West

Indies, and valued for its shade, as well as for the cooling acid pulp of its pods, which are preserved with sugar, and sent over to us.

H. I know them very well.

T. Well―do you think, now, you shall both be able to discover a papilionaceous flower when you meet with it again?

G. I believe I shall, if they are all like these we have been examining.

T. They have all the same parts, though variously proportioned. What are these?

G. There is the standard, and there are the two wings.

H. And the keel.

T. Right—the keel, sometimes cleft into two, and then it is an irregular, five-leaved flower. The chives are generally ten, of which one stands apart from the rest. The pistil single, and ending in a pod. Another circumstance, common to most of this tribe, is, that their leaves are winged or pinnated; that is, having leaflets set opposite each other upon a middle rib. You see this structure in these bean-leaves. But in the clovers there are only two opposite leaflets, and one terminating; whence their name of trefoil, or threeleaf. What we call a club on cards is properly a cloverleaf, and the French call it trèfle, which means the

same.

G. I think this tribe of plants almost as useful as the grasses.

T. They, perhaps, come the next in utility; but their seeds, such as beans and peas, are not quite such good nourishment as corn; and bread cannot be made of them.

G. But clover is better than grass for cattle.

T. It is more fattening, and makes cows yield plenty of fine milk. Well-let us march.

205

ON MAN.

Charles. You gave me the definition of a horse some time ago. Pray, sir, how is a man defined ?

Father. That is worth inquiring. Let us consider, then. He must either stand by himself, or be ranked among the quadrupeds; for there are no other twolegged animals but birds, which he certainly does not resemble.

C. But how can he be made a quadruped?

F. By setting him to crawl on the ground, in which case, he will as much resemble a baboon, as a baboon set on his hind legs resembles a man. In reality, there is little difference between the arms of a man and the fore legs of a quadruped; and, in all other circumstances of internal and external structure, they are evidently formed upon the same model.

C. I suppose that we must call him a digitated quadruped, that generally goes upon its hind legs.

F. A naturalist could not reckon him otherwise; and, accordingly, Linnæus has placed him in the same division with apes, macocos, and bats.

C. Apes, macocos, and bats!

F. Yes they have all four cutting teeth in the upper jaw, and teats on the breast. How do you like your relations ?

C. Not at all!

F. Then we will get rid of them by applying to the other part of human nature-the mind. Man is an animal possessed of reason, and the only one; at least in an equal degree, or anything like a near approach to it. This, therefore, is sufficient to define him.

C. I have often heard, that man is a rational creature, and I have a notion what that means; but I should like to have an exact definition of reason.

F. Reason is the faculty by which we compare ideas, and draw conclusions. A man walking in the woods

of an unknown country finds a bow. He compares it in his mind with other bows, and forms the conclusion that it must have been made by man, and that, therefore, the country is probably inhabited. He discovers a hut; sees in it half-burnt wood, and finds that the ashes are not quite cold. He concludes, therefore, with certainty, not only that there are inhabitants, but that they cannot be far distant. No other animal could do this.

C. But would not a dog, who had been used to live with men, run into such a hut, and expect to find people in it ?

F. He probably would-and this, I acknowledge, is very like reason, for he may be supposed to compare in his mind, the hut he has lived in with that which he sees, and to conclude, that as there were men in the former, there are men in the latter. But how little does this aid him. He finds no men there, and he is unable, by any marks, to form a judgment how long they have been absent, or what sort of people they were; still less does he form any plan of conduct in consequence of his discovery.

C. Then, is not the difference only, that man has much reason, and brutes little ?

F. If we adhere to the mere words of the definition of reason, I believe this must be admitted; but in the exercise of it, the superiority of the human faculties is so great, that man is in many points absolutely distinguished from brutes. In the first place, he has the use of speech, which no other animal has attained.

C. Cannot many animals make themselves understood by one another by their cries ?

F. They can make known their common wants and desires, but they cannot discourse, or, it is presumed, communicate ideas stored up in the memory. It is this faculty, which makes man an improvable being, the wisdom and experience acquired by one individual, being thus transmitted to others, and so on in an endless series of progression.-There is no reason to suppose