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talking of ladies, allow me, my dear fellow, to suggest that this little chat of ours, though wonderfully pleasant, is doubtless keeping our gentle friend awake. There shall be dullness of bright eyes on our conscience to-morrow. Would a seat a few miles further down the lake suit your convenience as well? Presto! Upon the hint, he is gone. With a bend of his well-set head that would have become the Bayard, he is off across the water, and we shall hear his last good-night presently full six miles away. Good-night to you, old fellow, and joy be with you! Well hast thou illustrated that rare point of courtesy that taught thee, finding thyself de trop, to 'stand not upon the order of thy going, but go at once. May the patent-leather step of the cockney that would harm thee (if he could) be guided by a kind PROVIDENCE elsewhere for ever!

The night is now far spent. The unwonted exhilaration produced by the scene subsides, and sleep, even like the sleep of an infant, comes at last.

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Awake! and view thy pall,
Thy grave-yard gear,

The hollow pageantry that mocks thy bier,
And speaks thy fall;

Late seated high on throne
Of royal state,

The clements themselves appeared to wait
On thee alone,

And smiling Fortune all
Her plenty poured.

Of GOD the chosen, and of man the lord,
Thyself didst call.

Far stretched o'er sea and land,
Thy sceptred sway,

Thy will the law, and death to disobey
Thy least command.

The meanest living thing

Might look with scorn

Upon thee now, of all thine honors shorn.
No more a king,

But lower than the least
That feared thy frown;

And, in creation's scale, descended down
Below the beast.

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BY PROFESSOR JAMES J. MAPES, EDITOR OF THE WORKING FARMER.'

C. 8. 7.

THIS element might well have been selected by the Divine writers as the emblem of natural truth, pervading all things, embracing all things, receiving and conveying all things, the attorney and actor in all of Nature's laws. The ultimates of water, and water itself, have been the great agents in the earth's configuration and progress. Its constituents are to be seen in every known substance as found by men and animals. No growth, decay, or combustion can proceed without them; no life can continue in their absence; no atmosphere can be respired which does not contain them; and when combined as water they possess new functions, with extended if not universal usefulness.

To the farmer of all others, a full knowledge of the constituents of water, and the part they play in Nature's laboratory, is most important. In their individual character they are known as oxygen and hydrogen, two gases colorless and inodorous. Our atmosphere is largely composed of oxygen. The chief ingredient of plants, carbon, is dissolved in oxygen by the various changes or decay, combustion, etc., forming carbonic acid, and in that form, and that only, can carbon be appropriated by plants, thus forming ninety per cent or more of their dry weight. All the other constituents of plants have oxygen in their composition, for all the elements found in the ashes of plants are oxyds. No plant could exist or form without them, and therefore animal life is due to them, and is sustained by the elements of water as a chief agent of its continuance. All the rocks are oxyds, and therefore all the soils, for they are the debris of the rocks. Hydrogen, the other constituent of water, is scarcely less important than oxygen, and when the two are combined as water, then new functions arise not common to the ultimates in their separate character as such, which are still more recognizable as the mundane agent of God; for like the

coalescence of two thoughts giving birth necessarily to a third, so the coalescence of these two gases forms a fluid, which for all time, and every second of time, is active in the performance of some new duty, giving birth to some new combination from which arise new functions, and thus the whole of Nature's laws in their combination and permutation, work out by the presence of water and its constituent functions, all those realizations which go to establish the results necessary for the happiness of man.

Water is Nature's motor. By it the rocks and soils are moved during floods like feathers in a whirlwind, and thus was the mixing of soils brought about to fit the earth for the use of man. By its means we have an horizon, for none could exist without it.

Water forms, pervades, and cleanses the atmosphere, fertilizes the earth, and furnishes more recognizable means of life to plants, animals, and man.

Trace water through Nature, and see the many functions it performs, which man knows only from observation, and could not know by thought alone, besides the thousands of functions, the modus operandi of which is beyond his power to observe, and the thousands of results which neither his observation nor thought can at all conceive; nor could the laws of Nature continue their progressive acts without this new compound.

Who can tell why oxygen and hydrogen combine to form water? Where and when do they combine? When and where is water de composed? Why is its mean bulk at forty degrees of heat, and why does it swell with uncontrollable force, entirely beyond the strength of any known material to withstand, when you cool it below or heat it above forty degrees?

If it were not for this exception of water, how could the rocks ever have been disintegrated to form soil? If such exception did not exist, why then, as water on the ocean's surface would part with its heat and become ice, or cool below forty degrees, it would sink and give place to warmer particles from below, until in the course of a single day our ocean would become ice. If it were not for this exception to general law, the water pervading each molecule of every plant and animal, would cease to lubricate them, and they would cease to grow; and were it not for the powers of water as a solvent, which powers are not common to its constituents, all progression in change of configuration in vegetable and animal life would cease the very clouds themselves would pass away, and the earth would become a void.

Water pervades all soils and rocks, and is capable of carrying from particle to particle, without increase of its own bulk, every substance which may be dissolved in it, while others are mechanically received by it without increasing its bulk. Of many of the gases, water will receive several times its own bulk; thus carbonic acid, resulting from the decay of organisms, is received by water and carried to such other parts of progressive nature, as require its sustenance. It receives and gives up such gases without any change of its own composition, leaving its quality as water unabridged. It pervades the hardest rock and every soil. No chemical change can go on without it or its constituents.

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