swells gradually into a club-shaped bladder, from which springs a bunch of leaves often thirty feet in length. It dies down every year when it has sown its seeds, and large as it is, shoots up again, and comes to perfection in the course of a few months. The sailors call it the "Otter Cabbage," because the otter likes to get upon the floating islands formed by its fronds, and is generally to be seen there, basking in the warm rays of the

sun.

In the next chapter I am going to describe some of the fungi, for space will not allow me to say any more about the seaweeds. I hope, however, I have succeeded in awakening your curiosity on the subject, and that the next time you go to the coast, you will set to work, and make a little collection of seaweeds. When you have succeeded in finding the name of the first, the second will appear much easier to you; and with patience and perseverance, even the difficulty of hard words may be overcome.

Love of nature is one of the greatest sources of happiness, and has been known to give interest and charm to a life of comparative solitude.

Not long ago, there lived on a small island on the coast of Scotland, a captain who devoted himself to the study of seaweeds. So great was

his love of plants, even when a boy, that while his companions were intent on their play, he might be seen in some neighbouring field, gathering and examining the flowers that grew there, and trying to find out their names. His schoolfellows laughed at him; and if he had not been as forward as they were with his lessons, they would have treated him as a mere simpleton. But he was not satisfied with finding out the names of the plants he gathered, he determined to paint them, and set about searching for colors in every direction. The inkstand afforded him black, and when he wanted a different shade, he had recourse to the bark of the alder tree. The tops of the heath yielded him yellow, and in his eagerness to obtain a red, he was in the habit of pricking his own fingers. When he became a man he entered the army, and made a great many voyages; but after he had quitted the service, he cultivated a little farm that lay by the seaside, and had about thirty yards of beach. In that retired spot there were no means of obtaining books, and for this reason his friends often urged him to go and live in Glasgow. But his answer always was, "How can I live without the woods and mountains that afford me fungi, or the rocky beach that yields me sea

weeds, among which I am every day finding something new!"

Such was his care and industry, that he discovered, in his rambles, more species of fungi than were thought to exist in the whole of Scotland. On the beach he was equally successful. He never went beyond his own little strip of shore, but after every tide, carefully examined the pools of salt water, and even waded out some distance in search of seaweeds. He found and described a great number of new species, and the name of Captain Carmichael will always be remembered, as that of a valuable contributor to science.

Chapter the Sixth.

THE FUNGI.*

THERE are few of my young readers who do not know a mushroom, or a toadstool, or who have not seen the blue mould on cheese, or the black dust on wheat, that farmers call blight or smut. Now all these things are fungi, and though quite different from each other in appearance, belong to one great class, the lowest in the vegetable world.

Perhaps you will smile to hear such things as these called plants, for they have neither leaves nor flowers, and are not a bit like the roses and geraniums that grow in the garden. A great many years ago, people thought as you do, and ridiculed the idea of fungi being plants. One clever man said they were living animals, and another that they were the work of insects, and built up by them for houses, just as the coral rocks are built up by the tiny little polypes.

*The word Fungus may either be derived from two Latin words, meaning the removal of the dead, or from the verb Fungor, to discharge or execute a duty.

But now these tales are set down as not true, and every one believes, and knows, that a fungus is a plant and nothing else.

Fungi and insects are both at work doing the same useful office, and have, therefore, been called the scavengers (or street sweepers) of nature. One object of their being is to clear away all sorts of decaying substances, which if, left to rot, would poison the air, and make it unfit for us to breathe.

The fungi do this work in a very curious manner. Thousands of their tiny seeds, or as they are called spores, are always floating about in the air, waiting for a convenient place to grow in. As they cannot live in any soil, but one that is made of decaying animal, or vegetable matter, they stay in the air, floating about hither and thither, until such a soil is to be found. During this time, they have, as it were, nothing to do, and are neither seen nor heard of. But the very moment a tree begins to decay, or a substance of any kind to decompose, then down drop the little seeds or spores, and cover it all over. These spores grow up into fungi almost while you are looking at them, for there is a great deal for them to do, and no time to be lost. You may judge how quickly they increase, when I tell you that one single fungus