Part 7

When I showed these budded roses to Miss Perceval, I expressed my surprise that amongst the numerous South American plants which have been collected in this country, I had not heard of any new species of rose.

“Are there any native roses in South America?” she asked.

“Oh! of course,” said I, “in such a flowery country. You know there is an island in the Rio de la Plata called the Isle of Flores, which I suppose is covered with flowers.”

“Can you describe any of your indigenous Brazilian roses?” said she, laughing.

After considering some time I was obliged to acknowledge that I could not recollect any one that I knew to be a native of Brazil.

“This is one of the numerous instances of _taking for granted_ which we meet every day,” said she. “You imagined that the rose must be wild in all parts of the world because it is everywhere cultivated:--you will therefore learn with surprise, that it is generally believed that all the roses yet known have been found between the 19th and 70th degrees of North latitude; none, therefore, belong to South America, though the profusion of China roses, cultivated in Brazil, might very naturally have given you the idea of their being natives. It is possible, however, that hereafter new species may be discovered south of the line, which will come under the head Rosaceæ, for the industry of botanists has wonderfully increased this family in a few years. In Wildenow’s book, published in 1800, he enumerates only thirty-nine species, yet there are upwards of one hundred now known and cultivated in this country; and a foreign professor has given a list of even two hundred and forty species. He proposes to divide them into twenty-four series, each of which is to bear the name of some botanist who has distinguished himself by a knowledge of that beautiful genus. For instance, Rosa Candolliana,--Wildenowiana,--Pallasiana, and so on.”

She told me also that all the apple and pear tribes are placed in the natural order of Rosaceæ; in the rose, the calyx, which is pitcher-shaped, encloses the germ; and in the former the germ is beneath the calyx. She mentioned, too, as a curious circumstance of the dog-rose or eglantine, that the farther North it is found, the more woolly are the styles, while to the Southward, as in Madeira, they have no hairs whatever.

The rose seems to be prized particularly in Persia, where it is the chief ornament of the garden. In that very entertaining book “Sketches of Persia,” the author mentions a breakfast which was given to him at a beautiful spot in the vicinity of Shiraz:--

“We were surprised and delighted to find that we were to enjoy this meal on a stack of roses! On this a carpet was laid, and we sat cross-legged like the natives. The stack, which was as large as a common one of hay in England, had been formed without much trouble, from the heaps or cocks of rose leaves, collected before they were sent into the city to be distilled.”

In Foster’s travels, too, Mary shewed me a description of the city of Kashmire, where the houses though slightly built, have flat roofs of sufficient strength to support a covering of earth; this is planted with roses and other flowers, and gives the town a very beautiful appearance. The earth also preserves the houses from being chilled by the quantity of snow that lies on them in winter; and in summer it gives them a refreshing coolness. Every creature he met had roses in their hands; and you may recollect, mamma, that the same thing is said of the city of Bisnagar in the Arabian Night’s tales. The province of Kashmire, Foster says, has been always famous for roses, particularly for one extremely fragrant species, of which the best attar of rose is made; but it will not grow in a more southerly climate.

He mentions a lake, near the city, in which there were several islands covered with rose-trees; they were all in brilliant blossom when he was there, and looked like large baskets of roses. How pretty the floating Chinampas of Mexico would be if they were planted with the Kashmire rose; or, what would suit them better, with the little rose of Jericho. Miss P. says this is one of the most singular plants in the world, and is found no where but in the deserts of Arabia. It is only six inches high, root and all; and its tiny branches curve inward, so as to enclose its numerous flowers in a sort of hollow globe. I think this may be truly called a Lilliputian tree.

_14th, Sunday._--The thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy, or the song of Moses, was the subject of our conversation this morning. My uncle told us that it consists of six parts.

“It opens in the first five verses with a summons to the whole universe to listen to the inspired voice of the prophet; and contrasts the power, truth, and justice of God with the iniquities of the ‘perverse generation’ whom he was addressing. In the next nine verses he expatiates on God’s continued indulgence and more than fatherly affection towards the Israelites; he makes an affecting appeal to their gratitude; and he dwells on the unceasing protection they had experienced from their first helpless origin, up to their entrance into the rich land of promise, in a manner which shows that Moses spoke from a full recollection of the scenes he had witnessed, and that he deeply felt the extent of the almighty power and goodness.

“In the expression ‘When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance,’ we are to understand the tribes of Israel; each of which, from their extraordinary increase of population, might be considered as a nation in itself, while the whole composed ‘His people,’ the most highly favoured of all the nations of the earth.”

I begged of my uncle to explain what was meant in the 13th verse by “He made them ride on the high places of the earth;” and afterwards by “sucking honey and oil out of the flinty rock?” He answered, “The former phrase applies to the victories which the Israelites had already achieved through the divine assistance, as well as to the final conquest of the land of Canaan by the same means. The honey and oil are allusions to the fruitfulness of the country, which abounds with wild bees, who build their honeycombs in the rocks; and with the finest olive trees, which it is well known strike their roots into the rocky crevices.

“The third part of the song,” he continued, “begins with the fifteenth verse, and describes the usual effect of prosperity upon a thoughtless and ungrateful people. ‘But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked.’ This figure of speech is probably taken from a pampered horse, who becomes unmanageable and vicious; and you will find it repeated in Hosea[4]. ‘According to their pasture they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore they have forgotten me.’ Jeshurun is derived from a word signifying upright, and is put here, as well as in Isaiah, for Israel. It would not be very difficult to apply the whole of this passage to more modern nations, who have far less excuse than even the Israelites for ‘forsaking God, and lightly esteeming the rock of their salvation;’ but, as individuals, at least, we may take a useful lesson from it; let us beware of the seductions of prosperity, lest our hearts become too much engrossed by the happiness that we enjoy, or too much depressed by the salutary disappointments that we sometimes undergo.

“The fourth part, from the nineteenth verse to the end of the twenty-fifth, expresses the indignation of the Lord, and his threats of rejecting apostate Israel, and of adopting in their room the believing Gentiles. It is quoted by St. Paul, as having that interpretation; and I will only further remark, that it is written with the most awful strength that language can supply; and that all its denunciations have been literally accomplished.

“The fifth division, to the end of verse 35, states the wise and gracious reasons of the dispersion of the Jews into all lands, both for their ultimate preservation, and to prevent their enemies from vainly ascribing to themselves their destruction. It was not indeed from any merit of their own that those enemies were allowed to triumph, they were only employed as the instruments of punishment; and God declares in the sequel that they will have to answer for their own corruptions and idolatries in the day of vengeance.

“‘For their rock is not as our Rock; even our enemies themselves being judges.’ This remarkable passage was evidently introduced by Moses in a parenthesis. He prophetically knew that their conquerors would often have to confess the superiority of the God of Israel over their own deities; and accordingly many examples of it may be collected in Scripture. I need scarcely remind you of Nebuchadnezzar’s decree, when he perceived the three faithful Jews escaping unhurt from his fiery furnace[5]; nor of his touching acknowledgment of the one true God when he regained his reason[6]; and in profane history you no doubt recollect the declaration of the Roman emperor Titus, after the conquest of Jerusalem,--That he was only an instrument in the hand of God, whose wrath had been so signally manifested against the Jews.

“The last part of this celebrated song is called the consolation of Israel: it holds out a gracious promise of future reconciliation when they should have repented of their obstinacy, and abjured the vain idols in whom they had trusted for protection; it gives an awful warning to their oppressors, that the day of account and of vengeance for them also will come; and the words in the concluding verse, ‘Rejoice, O ye nations with his people,’ seem to have been cited by St. Paul,[7] to prove the future conversion of both Jews and Gentiles to Christ, and their mutual exultation in his then undivided kingdom.”

_15th._--I seized an opportunity of asking my uncle some questions about the beds of coal in the forest of Dean, and I learned that the coal formation there, is an irregular elliptical basin, occupying nearly the whole of the forest tract. It is ten miles long, and six broad; and all the strata dip uniformly to the centre of the basin. He shewed me the extent of it on a geological map, which he has made of this county; and which marks in the prettiest manner all the principal strata. Each kind of rock has a particular colour, so that its extent is seen at a glance; and by a section at the bottom of the map, the dip or inclination of the strata, and the manner in which they lie on each other, are very distinctly shewn. He made Caroline and me observe that we could trace on it the mountain-lime and old red-sandstone (which enclose the coal-field) across the river Wye into South-Wales: there, he says, they contain another coal district, of much greater extent; and he showed it to us in Mr. Greenough’s beautiful geological map of all England. I should never have been tired of looking at these maps, if Caroline, who knew how little time my uncle could spare, had not asked him something about the origin of coal.

“Before I answer that question,” said he, “we must have a little discussion on the nature of _peat_; a substance which seems to be very closely allied to coal, and which, there is no doubt, has been produced by the decay and decomposition of vegetable matter. There are different kinds of peat, therefore, according to the different kinds of plants of which it is composed, and the different situations in which the process has been carried on; such as marsh, forest, and marine peat. Some extensive bogs have been caused within the memory of man, by the decay and natural fall of forests, over which the _sphagnum palustre_ and other mosses rapidly spread; agricultural implements and various domestic utensils have been found under them; and we may therefore assume, that as peat appears to be in the act of progressive increase, it belongs to an order of causes still in action. When examined, peat appears to be an entire mass of vegetable _fibres_: towards the surface they are nearly in an unchanged state, but in the middle the peat becomes more compact; and at the bottom of a very deep and ancient bog, they are almost obliterated, the substance being dense and black, and having all the chemical characters of jet. In some instances beds of peat alternate with beds of mud or sand, which must have been deposited in the bottom of lakes, and in these cases they appear something like an incomplete coal formation.

“In a short time,” continued my uncle, “we shall have a better opportunity of studying this curious substance, if your interest in it continues, when we are in Ireland, as that island contains a greater proportion of bog than any country with which we are acquainted.”

“My interest in it, my dear uncle, I replied, is not very likely to fail while I have your kind assistance; but as we are as yet in a coal country, perhaps you will tell us something of the formation or origin of that mineral.”

“There is no possible doubt,” he said, “that the general origin of coal must be referred to the vegetable kingdom; and I began with peat, to show you how masses of vegetable matter may be collected in thick and very extensive beds, ready for whatever process nature may afterwards employ in converting them into coal. Some species of coal are merely fossil wood (or lignite) impregnated with bitumen: the branches, trunks, and roots, though closely pressed together, are scarcely altered in texture, in some places; while in others they gradually lose every vegetable feature, and the substance in colour, lustre, and fracture, resembles pitch. Of this nature is the Bovey coal of Devonshire, and the Surturbrand of Iceland; and I have some specimens of the former, in which the fibres were flexible when I took them out of the pit, though now hard and brittle. From the disposition of those Bovey lignites, which lie in alternate strata with clay and gravel, it has been reasonably inferred that the trees and vegetables of the adjacent mountains were washed down at different periods into a lake; the clay and gravel, of course, sank first to the bottom, and formed the floor; but in time the trees saturated with moisture, and pressed down by an accumulation of other trees, sank also; and were again, perhaps in succeeding ages, covered by successive depositions.

“The common, or cubical coal, as it is called from the shape into which it breaks, does not bear the same obvious marks of vegetable origin in its structure; but where one species of coal can be so clearly demonstrated to be only altered vegetable matter, it would be bad philosophy to ascribe the other species to other causes. In the prodigious beds of coal, however, in Staffordshire, there is no want of vegetable traces; and even in the Newcastle coal the impressions of leaves and branches are frequently found, as well as in the freestone and slate-clay which intervene between its numerous strata. At Kilsyth, in Scotland, a very singular specimen was discovered; a tree standing upright, with its roots resting on a bed of coal, from which they could scarcely be distinguished, and its stem passing into a stratum of sandstone rock. The lower end was completely bituminated, and it burned with a clear flame; yet the upper part, though scarcely altered in the grain or apparent texture of the wood, was converted into sandstone similar to that by which it was enclosed. Round the stem there was a space of about an inch in thickness filled with coal, which renders it probable that the same process that converted the roots into coal acted upwards on the bark. The rock contains innumerable remains of plants; some of which are so perfect that their species have been made out, and no pencil could trace their delicate ramifications with greater nicety.

“In short,” continued my uncle, “it appears more than probable that every species of coal has proceeded from vegetable matter of different kinds, but under different circumstances; and that its chemical change was effected under the pressure of deep water. In one stage of that process it must have been in a soft pulpy state, like the lowest part of a deep peat-bog; for this is the only way that I can account for the impression of leaves, canes, seed-vessels, and shells, which are so commonly found on the external surface of coal.”

My uncle shewed us a beautiful specimen of a fern leaf, where the impression was as perfect as if it had been made with wax.

He then continued, “Sir James Hall thinks that peat may have been converted into coal by heat acting under great compression; and he has actually succeeded in making a substance very like it. When I have more leisure I will describe the ingenious process which he adopted, as well as some other experiments of the same nature, by which this distinguished philosopher discovered the means of fusing limestone, of imitating volcanic lava, and of forming solid sandstone from loose sand.

“But to return to our coals: the chief difference between the various kinds of coal which are applied to economical purposes, arises from the proportion of bitumen they contain. What is called _caking coal_ yields about 40 per cent.; when burning it swells, agglutinates, and emits much smoke and gas, which inflame at a certain temperature. _Cannel_ coal has only 20 per cent. of bitumen, and does not agglutinate or cake. It burns with a bright flame like a candle, from which circumstance it takes its name, cannel being the common pronunciation of candle in the North of England. The third sort I shall mention is called _anthracite_ by mineralogists; but its common name is _blind_ coal, or Kilkenny coal, from a district in Ireland, where there are vast beds of it. It contains little or no bitumen; it neither cakes nor flames, and gives out very little smoke. But as there are several varieties of coal between those principal species, much confusion has taken place in their names.”

_16th._--When Mary and I were in the garden to-day, I observed a very odd appearance on the under surface of some of the leaves of a pear-tree; they appeared thickly set with strange little downy russet-coloured things like spines growing out of the leaf, perpendicular to it, and about a quarter of an inch in length, and very little thicker than a pin, with a protuberance or excrescence at the base.

Mary was amused at my surprise, and told me that they were the habitations of insects. She then took one of these tubes off the leaf, and on giving it a gentle squeeze, a minute caterpillar, with a yellowish body and black head, came out of the lower end; for the head is always downwards. We examined the place from which she had removed it, and I saw that there was a small hollow in the outer skin and pulpy part of the leaf, which had been eaten away by the caterpillar. It moves this little tube or tent from one part of the leaf to the other, and eats no other part than what the tent covers; and when these insects are abundant, Mary says that every leaf is covered with little withered specks, where they have feasted themselves.

The tube in which the caterpillar lives, is composed of silk, spun from its mouth almost as soon as it comes out of the egg, and as it increases in size it enlarges the tube, by slitting it in two, and introducing a strip of new materials. To preserve the perpendicular posture of its tent, this ingenious insect attaches several silken threads from the protuberance at the base to the surface of the leaf; but it has a still more singular device to protect the tent against any violence: it forms a vacuum in the protuberance at the base, which fastens it to the leaf as effectually as if an air-pump had been employed. This vacuum is caused by the insect’s retreating on the least alarm up the tube, which its body so completely fills that the space below is free of air, and the tube is pressed down like the exhausted receiver of an air-pump.

Mary easily convinced me of this when she seized it suddenly while the insect was at the bottom, the silken cords readily gave way, and the tube was detached by a very slight force; but when she touched it gently, giving the insect time to retreat, we found that a much stronger effort was required to loosen it. As if aware of the effect of the admission of air from below, this little philosopher carefully avoids gnawing quite through the leaf; and when he has eaten as deeply as he can venture, he cuts the cords of his tent and pitches it on a fresh part of the surface. When it has attained its perfect state, it becomes a small brown moth.

_17th._-Mary has been trying a grand experiment, which has succeeded so well that mamma must have an account of it.

My uncle determined to remove a valuable jargonelle pear-tree from one wall to another. I forget his reason, but no matter; it was, however, much too late in the season, and the tree sickened, and seemed to be dying. The gardener declared it could not live; but Mary, who had read that trees in such a predicament might be saved by a gentle but continual drip of water being guided to the roots, requested my uncle to let her try the effect of this plan. He is always anxious to encourage useful experiment, and willingly consigned the tree to her prescriptions.

She took two large flower-pots, and, having carefully corked the holes, she suspended one to each end of a stick, which was fastened across the stem of the tree. A piece of cloth-listing or selvage, long enough to reach the ground, was put into each pot, with a stone tied to it to prevent its slipping out; and the other end of the listing was slit into three parts, which were slightly pegged into the ground. She then had the pots filled with water, and the whole of the listing being wetted, each of them acted like a syphon, drawing the water up over the edge of the pot, as my uncle says by capillary action, and conducting it slowly and regularly into the ground. The moisture spread to the roots, and in three days the young leaves began to revive. The pots were filled every morning, and she changed the listing once a week, as the filaments of the cloth became clogged, and the water was not so freely transmitted. The daily improvement of the tree was very gratifying to my uncle, who enjoyed Mary’s ingenuity and success; and even the gardener has this morning pronounced it to be out of danger.

_18th._--I am afraid that my dear mamma will call me a little credulous simpleton when she reads this account of the singular sagacity of a cat; but my aunt took great pains to ascertain that it was quite correct.

Dame Moreland has some remarkably fine cats, and she is in the constant habit of drowning all their progeny, except one kitten of her favourite, Mrs. Snowtip’s, which she selects with due attention to its beauty. This time, however, pussy thought proper to choose that one for herself, and carrying it from the garden into the house, she left the rest to perish. Accustomed to their being regularly taken away, she seemed to agree to that arrangement, and devoted herself to the one she had saved.

A few weeks afterwards another of the cats kittened, and its whole brood being destroyed, the poor thing became very uneasy, and suffered much from the want of her little ones to relieve her of the nourishment provided for them. On which, the fat Mrs. Snowtip being very ill-supplied herself, actually employed the poor bereaved cat as a nurse. This office she performs with proper fidelity, and the two ladies agree perfectly; for while the nurse feeds little Snowtip, the mother smooths and dresses it herself, and on any alarm flies to its protection, while the nurse seems contented with doing her own duty, and never interferes on such occasions.