nd keep it in on every
side, and should lay it even with the ground, and its children within
it. And did not this feeling operate when, even amidst the agonies of
a crucifixion, his mind rested on the sufferings of others, and not on
his own? "Daughters of Jerusalem! weep not for me, but weep for
yourselves and for your children." And shall we not, in this as in
every other respect, seek to imitate our adorable Lord? Shall we not
feel deeply interested in the spiritual welfare of our fellow-men? If
we do not, it is, alas! a fearful, a decisive proof, that the flame of
holy love, of devoted zeal, has not been kindled in our bosom; that we
do not feel the importance of that salvation which is offered us so
freely in the gospel; that we are not duly impressed with a dread of
that woe unspeakable, that shall be the portion of those whose souls
shall be for ever lost.

SACRED PHILOSOPHY.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NATURAL THEOLOGY OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM.

By Robert Dickson, M.D., F.L.S.

No. XI. Pt. 1.

"Lo! the oak that hath so long a nourishing
From the time that it 'ginneth first to spring,
And hath so long a life, as we may see,
Yet at the last wasted is the tree."

CHAUCER.

While the actions which lead to the various effects on the external
appearance of a tree, described in the former paper, are going on,
many important changes occur in the internal parts, producing
alterations not less admirable, whether in respect of the tree itself,
or of the ends to which it may be rendered subservient. The base of an
exogenous tree is not merely widened by the superposition of annual
layers of wood over the first shoot, by which it gains greater
mechanical power to support the extending head of wide-spreading
branches, but the central portion is, in most cases, progressively
rendered more and more solid by the deposition in it of various
secretions prepared by the leaves, and transmitted from them through
the medullary rays into this part as their ultimate resting-place.

The fibres descending from the developing buds on the stem, and
passing between the plates of cellular tissue, which constitute the
medullary rays, and the cells of which have a horizontal direction,
are but the basis of the vegetable fabric. The stem of an exogenous
plant has been compared to a piece of linen, of which the weft is
composed of cellular tissue, and the warp of fibrous and v