the outside to the inside of the flower, and that the central or fructifying leaves are carried forward to the highest stage of organic perfection.

We shall now describe the parts of an apple-blossom. Suppose one to have been procured from the apple-tree. Now look on the outside of the blossom. There are five green leaves, greatly diminished in size, but nevertheless still retaining their green colour. Individually they are called sepals, (Lat. sepalum, “a leaf,”) collectively a calyx, (Gr. κáλvέ, “a cup,") because they form a little green cup-like covering around the next set of leaves. These are called collectively the corolla, (Lat. corolla, “a garland,") and individually petals (Gr. Téraλov, "a leaf"). These are the most showy leaves in the cluster, slightly tinged with pink, and of a dazzling whiteness.

"The epoch of flowering," says Professor Balfour, "is often brought under our notice in the sacred writings. Our Saviour says, 'Consider the lilies, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' Solomon was no doubt arrayed in gorgeous robes, tinctured by the highest art of man, and coloured with the richest dyes which Tyre or eastern climes could furnish: but the colours were brought out very differently from those of the floral petals. In these each microscopic cell has its own special colouring matter, elaborated by the vital secretive power impressed upon it by the Author of nature. Every petal consists of a congeries of these beauteous active living pigment cells, each working out God's plan in the exquisite arrangement and blending of colour. When we consider, then, these minute agents all conspiring to bring out the diversified colours of flowers; when we observe the masterly skill with which the various hues are arranged; and that, whether blended or separated, they are under the control of a law which never falls short of the perfection of elegance; that there is not a flower but shows in every streak and stain the touch of God's unrivalled pencil, we may well exclaim, Truly the robes of the richest monarch, as regards their human colouring, fall infinitely short of the living glory of the lilies.""

The stamens.-These are situated immediately within the apple blossom, or corolla. They are all of them leaves carried forward to a still higher stage of structure. In the stamen, the stalk of the leaf is converted into a filament, and the expanded portion of the leaf, or its blade, is contracted into the anther, which contains fertilizing matter called pollen. This pollen is easily seen with a small flower microscope. The stamens are, in fact, the fertilizing leaves of the flower.

In the grasses the flowers are not marked by bright colours. They consist of green or pale-coloured scales, which cover the stamens and pistils, that is, those parts concerned in the production of fruit and seed. When in flower, the stamens of grasses hang out, supported on very slender stalks or filaments, and they are thus moved about by every breath of air, and are easily carried away by the wind. Their existence is brief, and the tenure by which they are attached to the flower is a thread easily snapped.

Does not this aptly illustrate the allusions to grass by St. James and St. Peter, when they say, speaking of man," As the flower of the grass he shall pass away?" We call to mind, also, the dirge of the Psalmist: "As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more." The careful studying of the natural objects to which reference is made by the sacred writers enables us to understand, and more fully to appreciate, their correctness, as illustrations of the great truths which they are employed to shadow forth.

The pistils.-These are to be found in the centre of the apple blossom. There are usually five pistils, which have free styles and stigmas, and united ovaries. Each ovary contains two ovules, which are surrounded by cartilaginous walls, forming what is called the core of the apple; and the whole is enclosed in the fleshy tube of the calyx, which by enlargement becomes the fruit. If a ripe apple is cut across, the cavities of the five ovaries, with their cartilaginous walls and seeds attached to their interior, will be seen in the centre of the fruit.

The process of fertilization.-When the flower is fully expanded, the anthers of the stamens are at first unruptured, moist, and closed; but when the flower is fully matured, the anthers become dry, open their cells, and discharge the pollen on the stigmas of the pistils, which about this time exude a clammy fluid, serving to retain the pollen grains. These grains swell out, and finally emit delicate tubes, which, penetrating the loose cellular tissue of the style, convey the fertilizing contents of the pollen grains to the ovules in the ovary of the pistil. The sap is now attracted away from the parts of the flower which were immediately concerned in fertilization, a new vitality having been established in one part to the detriment of another.

The current of sap sets in to the forming fruit, away from the stamens and petals. These fade and fall off, having fulfilled their important but ephemeral functions. The stigmas and styles of the pistils disappear equally with the other parts. The ovaries alone remain, to aid in the ripening of the seed contained within them.

The sap elaborated in the ordinary green leaves of the stem passes through what was formerly the flower-stalk into the fleshy tube of the calyx, by which it is retained, and which now enlarges and continues to increase in size as long as the sap continues to enter it. The gorged or swollen cellular tissue, or substance of the apple, is formed from this sap about the cartilaginous walls of the ovaries. The surface of the apple whilst green acts like a leaf on the atmosphere, absorbing carbonic acid gas and giving out oxygen. This process is pradually reversed as the apple grows, until at length, when it has assumed a ripe ruddy appearance, it absorbs oxygen instead of giving it out. At maturity the apple-stalk ceases to afford any longer a passage for the fluids, and becomes finally unequal to the task of supporting the fruit, so that it falls to the ground. Here it lies, unless eaten by cattle, or gathered up by careful hands, till it decays. On the

approach of spring, the seeds contained within the cartilaginous walls of the ovaries, stimulated to life by the heat, put forth roots into the nourishing decaying mass which surrounds them, and which was organized for this very purpose, and at length develop into new plants, which, should circumstances favour their growth, pass again through the same lifechanges as the parent-tree on which they originated.

A few words more about the old age and death of the apple-tree, and our paper is finished. The individual existence of a plant usually terminates with its flowers and seed. This law at least applies to annuals and biennials; but an apple-tree will continue to flower and fruit for a great many years in succession. The reason is, that amongst its numberless shoots and branches there are always some which permanently retain their vegetative character, and these act as a preservative against the exhausting influence of the flowers and fruit. Yet nevertheless we see that apple-trees, and all other trees, die sooner or later. Not only do their different varieties of leaves die, but their shoots, branchlets, and branches, after they have arrived at their maximum development, manifest all the symptoms of a gradually expiring vitality. Nothing is more common in old apple-trees than to see these primary branches thus gradually expiring, or absolutely dead, amongst other branches which still continue annually to put forth foliage, flowers, and fruit; and the fate which thus overtakes the branches will at last overtake the whole tree. Its dead branches, and especially the hollow decayed interior of its stem, are significant of the fact, that the apple-tree is old, and that its life is gradually drawing to a close.

It is, however, very difficult to point out the several stages of vegetative

inactivity till the life of our fruit-tree ceases. The death appears to take

place from within to without, and downwardly from above to below, or from the extremities of its branches to its roots. In most cases death is brought about by violent interruptions to the natural life-processes. The tree, after having braved the storms for ages perhaps, is at last blown down and uprooted. "As the tree falls, so it lies;" and, if left undisturbed, busy, active, industrious nature will soon envelop its decaying, mouldering trunk in a beautiful death-shroud of moss and lichen, beneath which it will continue to moulder until it is resolved into its original elements of earth and air. The lofty tree, though it lives for thousands of years, must die at last, and pass away, like one of the lowly annuals which it overshadows.

Thus there is no chance-work in the construction of an apple-tree. All its parts are put together with the most consummate skill and wisdom. Its winter leaves, its summer leaves, all spend life usefully. Its fading blossoms, ripening fruits, and fallen mouldering trunk, how impressive their teachings! Those blossoms are beautiful even in death, because they have spent life usefully; their work is over, and they are removed at the proper time. All this teaches us to spend life usefully, and to trust in the GREAT CREATOR. "All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come."

DRUID.

349

ANECDOTES OF EARLY AMERICAN METHODISM.

66
EMIGRATION OF IRISH PALATINES."

Os a spring morning in 1760, (says an Irish authority apparently familiar with the local facts,) a group of emigrants might have been seen at the Custom-house Quay, Limerick, preparing to embark for America. At that time emigration was not so common an occurrence as it is now, and the excitement connected with their departure was intense. They were Palatines from Balligarrane, and were accompanied to the vessel's side by crowds of their companions and friends, some of whom had come sixteen miles to say "farewell" for the last time. One of those about to leave-a young man, with a thoughtful look and resolute bearing-is evidently the leader of the party; and more than an ordinary pang is felt by many as they bid him farewell. He had been one of the firstfruits of his countrymen to Christ, had been the leader of their infant church, and in their humble chapel had often ministered to them the word of life. He is surrounded by his spiritual children and friends, who are anxious to have some parting words of counsel and instruction. He enters the vessel, and from its side once more breaks among them the bread of life. And now the last prayer is offered; they embrace each other; the vessel begins to move. As she recedes, uplifted hands and uplifted hearts attest what all felt. But none of all that vast multitude felt more, probably, than that young man. His name is Philip Embury. His party consisted of his wife, Mary Switzer, to whom he had been married on the 27th of November, 1758, in Rathkeale church; two of his brothers, and their families; Peter Switzer, probably a brother of his wife; Paul Heck, and Barbara his wife; Valer Tettler; Philip Morgan, and a family of the Dulmages. The vessel arrived safely in New-York, on the 10th of August, 1760. Who, that pictures before his mind that first band of Christian emigrants, but must be struck with the simple beauty of the scene? Yet who, among the crowd that saw them leave, could have thought that two of the little band were destined, in the mysterious providence of God, to influence for good countless myriads, and that their names should live as long as the sun and moon endure? Yet so it was. That vessel contained Philip Embury, the first Class-Leader and Local preacher of Methodism on the American continent; and Barbara Heck, "a mother in Israel," one of its first members; -the germ from which, in the good providence of God, has sprung the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States; a Church which has now, more or less under its influence, about seven millions of the germinant mind of that new and teeming hemisphere! "There shall be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon; and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the

earth."

ASBURY'S FIRST MEETING WITH DR. COKE.

Asbury continued to fly like the apocalyptic angel, "having the everlast

ing Gospel to preach," over all the central parts of the continent, from New-York to North-Carolina. "The Lord," he writes, "is my witness, that if my whole body, yea, every hair of my head, could labour and suffer, they should be freely given up for God and souls." In November, 1784, weary and worn by travel and preaching, he arrived, on Sunday, during public worship, at his friend Barratt's chapel. A man of small stature, ruddy complexion, brilliant eyes, long hair, feminine but musical voice, and gowned as an English clergyman, was officiating. Asbury ascended the pulpit, and embraced and kissed him before the whole assembly for the itinerant recognised him as another messenger from Wesley, come to his relief after the desertion of all his English associates; a man who, though of dwarfish body, had an immeasurable soul, and had become a chieftain of Methodism in England, Ireland, and Wales, only second to Wesley himself. Asbury knew not yet the full import of his mission; but, after his labours and sufferings, as Wesley's solitary representative in America, any such visiter was to him like an angel from heaven; and he knew the man too well, to doubt that his presence in the New World would make an era in its struggling Methodism. This little man, of gigantic soul, whom Asbury, mourning his death years afterward, was to characterize as "the greatest man of the last century in Christian labours," represented, in the humble pulpit of Barratt's chapel, the most momentous revolution of American Methodism. He was the Rev. Thomas Coke, D.C.L., late of Jesus College, Oxford; but now the first Protestant bishop of the western hemisphere.

THE "ASSASSINS" OF THE MIDDLE AGES.*

AMONGST What we may call the curiosities of etymology, the word assassin holds a conspicuous place. Many persons, if asked, could not account for its origin; whilst others, of higher literary pretensions, might perhaps have a faint recollection of "the old man of the mountain," his followers, and his deeds of daring.

If we open M. Littré's French dictionary at the article assassin, we find the following explanation :-"Assassin is derived from the Arabic haschisch, a name given to the powder prepared with the leaves of the hemp-plant, and which is the chief ingredient of an intoxicating compound called haschischy." The Assassins were then, in point of fact, the men of the haschischy; and, when under the influence of its fumes, they could be led to do, at the bidding of their chief, acts of the most dauntless courage, and too often deeds of abominable cruelty.

Like many episodes in the history of the middle ages, the rise and progress of the Assassins, their habits, their intercourse with other nations and

* Nouvelles Recherches sur les Ismaeliens ou Bathiniens de Syrie, plus connus sous le Nom d'Assassins. Par M. C. Defrémery. 8vo. Paris: Durand.