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way to the Mediterranean Sea, is a very curious kind of Polype, Father.

PAPA. Yes, it is. It is not a Coralline, you know, for all the Corallines are fixed by their bases to submarine substances; but the Sea-pen either swims about in the water, or floats upon the surface. Of all the Pennatulæ, the Silver Sea-pen, as it is called, is the largest as well as the most elegant. There is a fine specimen of it in the British Museum. It is of a beautiful silvery white, elegantly streaked on each of the feather-like processes, with lines of the deepest black. This species is very rare, and is, I believe, a native of the Indian seas.

HENRY.-I was reading the other day an account which Dr. Shaw gives, in the History of Algiers, of the Pennatulæ Phosphoreæ. He says that these animals are so luminous in the water, that in the night fishermen discover fishes swimming about in various depths of the sea by the light they give.

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PAPA. They might with propriety be called "the lamps of the ocean." Linneus, I think, speaking of the phosphoretic Sea-pen, says, “ Habitat in oceano, fundum illuminans ;"—"It dwells in the ocean, illuminating the deep." The manner in which the Pennatulæ receive their food is remarkable: they take it in through their fins, or feather-like processes, which are furnished with suckers, or mouths, armed with filaments. Each sucker has eight filaments, with which it catches or draws in

its prey.

ANNA.-Why are they called Sea-pens, Papa?

PAPA. From their resemblance to a pen in shape. They are generally about four inches long, and of a reddish colour. There is another curious Polype, Anna, the Hydra, an inhabitant of fresh water, which I will tell you of at some future time: it is a very wonderful creature, I assure you.

HENRY.-Indeed it is. I remember you once gave me an account of it: I think you said it has neither heart, nor blood vessel, nor nerve, nor muscle.

PAPA. None of these organs can be discovered in any of the Polypi, I believe their only method of extending their tentacula is by filling them with water. But you must not forestal me, Henry; I expect to surprise Anna by the account I have to give of this singular creature. HENRY.-All Zoophytes are inhabitants of water, are they not?

PAPA. Yes, I believe they all are.

Z. Z.

DESCRIPTION OF BRITISH TREES.
No. I.

It has frequently been our lot to remark, as we walked by the way, the extreme ignorance, mixed with a desire to know, that betrayed itself in the ladies our companions respecting the trees, every where claiming attention as the most magnificent productions of the vegetable world, produced without the culture or the care of man. Passing by the light and airy birch, we have been asked if it is not a willow; and we have seen girls hunting for acorns under an Ash Tree, in order to discover if it is an Oak. If any sort of ignorance is undesirable, this must surely be so; and it is our purpose so to pursue the subject that the fault shall be their own, if our readers be not able to give a name to any tree they meet with on their rambles, that is the natural growth of the country.

THE MAPLE-ACER.

The Maple is described botanically as having in the flower five petals and five calix leaves, though the appearance is rather that of a ten-leaved calix. The eight stamens consign it to the class Octandria of Withering, while the stamina and pistilum, in separate flowers on the same plant, may place it in the class Monoecia of some botanists. A reference to the Plate, No. 1, will best describe the shape of the leaf, and growth of the flower, which is altogether green, and blossoms in May.

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We find the Maple chiefly in the hedge-rows, growing small, and mixing its branches among the underwood, but it may be reared into considerable trees; and when large, the wood is extremely valuable from the closeness and variegated appearance of the grain. The ancients held it in very high estimation. Pliny says,

"The Maple, for the elegancy and lightness of the wood, is next to the very Citron itself. There are two kinds of it, especially the White, which is wonderfully beautiful; this is called the French Maple, and grows in that part of Italy that is on the other side the Po, beyond the Alps; the other has a curled grain, so curiously maculated, that from a near resemblance, it was usually called Peacock's Tail.-The Bruscum, (the knots or swellings of the Maple) is of a blackish kind, with which they make tables."-PLINY.

"Such spotted tables were the famous Tigrin and Pantherine curiosities; not so called from being supported with figures carved like those beasts, as some conceive, and was in use even in our grandfathers' days, but from the natural spots and maculations. Such a table was that of Cicero, which cost him 10,000 sesterces; such another had Asinius Gallus. That of King Juba was sold for 15,000, and another, which I read of, valued at 140,000, which, at about three half-pence sterling, arrives at a pretty sum; and yet that of the Mauritanian Ptolemie was far richer, containing four feet and a half diameter, three inches thick, which is reported to have been sold for its weight in gold. Of that value they were, and so madly luxurious the age, that when the men, at any time, reproached their wives for their wanton expensiveness in pearl and other rich trifles, they were wont to retort and turn the tables upon their husbands"the supposed origin of that now common expression-"the great art was in the seasoning and politure: for which last, the rubbing with a man's hand, who came warm out of the bath, was accounted better than any cloth."-EVELYN.

Virgil introduces Evander as holding his court among the groves of Maple, and says,

"On sods of turf he set the soldiers round,

A maple throne raised higher from the ground
Received the Trojan chief."-ÆNEID.

This wood can be worked so thin as to become almost transparent-but the tree, in its uncultured state, is so small with us, that it answers little other purpose than that of the turner, inlayer, and cabinet-maker, to whom it is highly valuable.

"The savages in Canada, when the sap rises in the Maple, by an incision in the tree, extract the liquor; and having evaporated a reasonable quantity thereof, (as suppose seven or eight pounds,)

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