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OUR FRUIT TREES.

As fruits require a hot dry summer to ripen them, the climate of England is not fitted for their growth, except by means of careful cultivation. The chief of our fruittrees are the crab, bullace, medlar, plum, wild cherry, and native pear; and of our fruit-bearing shrubs, the rasp berry, strawberry, blackberry, sloe, hazel-nut, hip, haw, cranberry, bilberry, whortleberry, with the currant and gooseberry of our gardens, which have been greatly improved by cultivation.

HEWITT, "Physical Geography of England and Wales."

DUTCH AND CELTIC WORDS.

A good many of our sea-terms are Dutch, as sloop, schooner, yacht, boom, skipper, tafferel; to smuggle, to wear, in the sense of veer, as when we say to wear a ship; skates, too, and stiver, are Dutch. Celtic things are for the most part designated among us by Celtic words, such as bard, kilt, clan, pibroch, plaid, reel. Nor only such as these, which are all of them comparatively of modern introduction, but a considerable number, how large a number is yet a very unsettled question, of words which at a much earlier date found admission into our tongue, are derived from this quarter.

TRENCH, "English, Past and Present."

THE REINDEER.

PART I.

The reindeer is to be found in most of the northern regions of the old and the new worlds. It has long, slender, branching horns, those of the male being much the largest. Its coat is of a brown colour above, and white beneath, but at the approach of winter begins to thicken in a remarkable manner, and to assume that lighter

colour which is the great peculiarity of polar quadrupeds. Its hoofs are cloven and moveable, so that it spreads them abroad as it goes to prevent its sinking in the snow, and, as the animal moves along, they are heard to crack with a pretty loud noise.

The reindeer is usually about four feet and a half in height. It is ordinarily so docile that it needs scarcely any direction; so swift that two of them yoked in a sledge will travel one hundred and twelve English miles in a day; and so persevering that it toils on hour after hour, without any refreshment except a mouthful of snow, which it hastily snatches.

PART II.

During summer the animal pastures on the green herbage, and seeks the highest hills for the purpose of avoiding the gad-fly, which at that period deposits eggs in its skin; in the winter its food consists of the lichen, which it digs from beneath the snow with its antlers and feet. It constitutes the whole wealth of the Laplanders, and supplies to them the place of the horse, the cow, the sheep, and the goat. Alive or dead, it is equally subservient to their wants. During its life, its milk is converted into cheese, and it is employed to convey its owner over the snowy wastes of his native country. When it is dead, spoons are made of its bones, glue of its horns, bowstrings and threads of its tendons, clothing of its skin; while its flesh becomes savoury food.

ON THE HISTORY IN WORDS.

What a record of inventions, how much of the history of commerce, is preserved in names! Thus the "bayonet" tells us that it was first made at Bayonne; "worsted" that it was first spun at a village so called (in the neighbourhood of Norwich); "sarsnet," that it is a Saracen manufacture; cambric," that it reached us from Cambray; 'diaper," that it came from Ypres; "dimity,"

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from Damietta; "currants," from Corinth; "agates," from a Sicilian river, Achates; "jet," from a river Gages, in Lycia, where this black stone is found. "Rhubarb," is a corruption of Rhu barbum, the root from the savage banks of the Rhu, or Volga ; “jalap" is from Xalapa, a town in Mexico; "jane," from Genoa; "parchment," from Pergamum. The "guinea" was originally coined (in 1663) of gold brought from the African coast so called.

England now sends her "calicoes" and "muslins" to India and the East; yet these words give standing witness that we once imported them from thence; for "calico" is from Calicut, and "muslin" from Moussul, a city in Asiatic Turkey.

TRENCH, "Study of Words."

VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES.

Every part of a plant is made serviceable by man. Thus the roots furnish tapioca, arrowroot, chicory, ginger, madder, turmeric, rhubarb, sarsaparilla, ipecacuanha, etc.; the stems or stalks furnish various kinds of timber, sago, flax, hemp, jute, and straw; the leaves furnish tea, tobacco, and senna; the fruits furnish cotton, various kinds of corn, rice, coffee, cocoa, currants, plums, almonds, linseed, nutmegs, pepper, mace, mustard, and a variety of other articles; the barks furnish cork, and tanning materials; and the juices such substances as sugar, indigo, turpentine, camphor, india rubber, gutta percha, gums,

etc.

JAS. HEWITT, "Industrial and Commercial Geography."

RICE.

The rice plant is a species of grass growing very much like our own oats. When ripe, each grain is enclosed in a yellow husk, and hung in fine clusters on very thin stalks. It grows best in very moist soil, and low lands which are flooded at particular seasons are on that account preferred for its cultivation. Before it is used for food,

the husk is removed by the poor peasants by rubbing the grain between flat stones and blowing the broken husks away. Machines are also used for the same purpose. Rice is grown in great abundance in India, Japan, and China, where it is a principal article of food. In our own country it serves us for puddings, and for thickening soup. It is both cheap and wholesome.

Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation. Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe and levelled by the roller. DR. JOHNSON.

What ardently I wished, I long believed,
And disappointed still, was still deceived,
By expectation every day beguiled,
Dupe of to-morrow, even from a child.

GOLDSMITH.

Time but the impression stronger makes,
As streams their channels deeper wear.

THE CLIMATE OF ENGLAND.

The air is generally very moist, most so near the western coast, and less so as we go eastward.

It is to the abundant moisture of the air that the beautiful foliage of our trees and the rich verdure of our fields and gardens, so much praised by foreigners who visit England, are chiefly owing. Moisture is one of the two things most necessary to vegetation, and hence our fields, trees, and woods possess a continuous richness of verdure during a great part of the year which cannot be found under the sunny skies of the shores of the Mediter

ranean.

The weather is at times liable to very sudden changes, depending mainly on the changes of the wind.

HEWITT, "Physical Geography of England and Wales.".

USES OF RIVERS.

Rivers form one of the most valuable agencies in the physical history of the globe. They are the irrigators of its surface, adding alike to the beauty of the landscape and the fertility of the soil: they carry off impurities and every sort of waste debris, to be deposited in the ocean as the strata of future continents; and when of sufficient volume they form the most available of all channels of communication with the interior of continents. Man has ever located himself by their banks, using their waters for his domestic purposes, making their bosoms the highway of his commerce, and applying the force of their currents to the abridgment of his toil.

CHAMBERS'S" Information for the People."

HEMP.

The hemp plant goes through a similar process to flax, but is much coarser, and grows to a height of more than six feet. Great quantities are produced in Russia and Poland, and also, though not to the same extent, in Prussia, Austria, Italy, India, and the United States of America. It would be hard to say what we should do without this very useful plant, for, from the fibres of its stem, after they have been separated and cleaned by processes similar to those described in the case of flax, we make cloth for the sails of our ships, and ropes for their rigging; and although many substitutes have been proposed for it, none have been found to answer so well.

PROF. ARCHER.

MECHANIC ART AND SCIENCE IN THE

ANIMAL CREATION.

The busy hive of human industry, whether in the department of the mechanic arts, or in the more subtle investigations of pure science, has its counterpart in the several classes of the subordinate creation. An ingenious

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