after a short deliberation Fanny seated Miss Vaughan on a little grassy mound, her back resting against the trunk of a neighbouring tree, whose rough roots she declared formed "a beautiful armchair." She had hardly time to throw herself on the grass by her side, when she heard her sisters' voices in the lane on the other side of the hedge. "Ah, Dora and Mary," she exclaimed, as she ran to meet them, "I am going to puzzle you famously this evening. I shall propose a question, and you will all have to find out the answer; a very easy question you will say it is, until you try to guess it. 'What is the difference between a plant and an animal?' but you must not tell them, Miss Vaughan, dear, or it will spoil all the fun."

Miss Vaughan promised to keep the secret, and Dora and Mary undertook to think over the problem and prepare an answer by the appointed time.

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hedge."

CHAPTER XV.

"THESE are Thy glorious works, Parent of good,
Almighty, thine this universal frame,

Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous then?
Unspeakable, who sitt'st above these heavens,
To us invisible, or dimly seen

In these Thy lowest work; yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought and power divine.

MILTON.

As winter approached, the little party found themselves obliged to relinquish their rambles over fields and woods, and to confine themselves chiefly to the sober high-road. Submitting with regret to this necessity, they decided that it would be advisable to put away their collection of dried flowers (amounting to about thirty specimens) until the return of spring, and in the meantime to increase their store of botanical knowledge, by perusing some interesting works of Miss Vaughan's selection, and by conversing upon them with her in the course of their daily walks, as they now did naturally about everything that interested them.

“Do you know, Miss Vaughan," said Mary one morning, "that there is a Pitcher-plant in Sir Henry Clark's hothouse, and Papa has promised to take us all there some day to see it; he says he believes that much that is related of this plant is fabulous. I should like to know how much that is."

"I believe I can tell you, my love, how much of the

marvellous is connected with what is true in the accounts which are sometimes given of it. In the first place it is not a native of the desert, where it has been said to refresh, with its miraculous draught, the thirsty traveller as he passes, but grows only in the marshy ground of Ceylon. Neither is it water which it distils nightly in its pouch, but a sweet luscious liquid, and the flavour of which is said to resemble that of roasted apples. In the morning it is thick and milky, but the action of the sunbeams renders it as fine and clear as water. Part of it disappears during the day, and is renewed every night. Attached to the pouch or gland is a tendril, by means of which it hooks itself on to a neighbouring plant, and when full, the lid gives way and the contents are poured upon the ground. It has been said that the lid then shuts again, and the pouch refills itself. This is a mistake; the lid, once open, cannot reclose, and the flower withers away on the stalk, reminding us of the beautiful figure of Scripture, for the pitcher is broken at the cistern.'

"And, pray, what is the definition of glands?" continued Mary; "I so often meet with the word in descriptions of plants, and I do not clearly understand what it means."

"I do not wonder at your being puzzled, Mary,” replied Miss Vaughan," for it is a word which seems often to be used in different senses. What are generally termed glands, however, in plants, are small globular bodies which secrete a liquid, and which are placed on the tips of hairs. The pouch of the Pitcher-plant is a very large gland; they are usually so minute as to be invisible to the naked eye; as, for instance, in the Nettle, the glands of which on the