heart, that whenever there is a party of
children, playing around an open well, that there could be a girl like
Jenny Naylor with them.

A VEGETABLE GAS MANUFACTORY.

[Illustration]

There is a plant, called by botanists the Fraxinella, which has the
peculiar property of giving out, from its leaves and stalks, a gas
which is inflammable. Sometimes, on a very still day, when there is
no wind to blow it away as fast as it is produced, this gas may be
ignited by a match, when the plant is growing in the open air. But
this is very seldom the case, for the air must be very quiet, and the
plant very productive, for enough gas to be found around it to ignite
when a flame is applied.

But it is perfectly possible, as you may see in the engraving, to
collect sufficient gas from the Fraxinella to produce combustion
whenever desired. If the plant is surrounded by a glass case, the gas,
as fast as produced, is confined in the case, and at last there is so
much collected in this novel gasometer, that it is only necessary to
open the case, and apply a match, to see plant-gas burning.

It is not at all probable that the least use in the world could be
made of this gas, but it is certainly a very pretty experiment to
collect and ignite it.

There are other plants which have this property of exuding
illuminating gas in very small quantities, but none, I believe, except
the Fraxinella, will produce enough of it to allow this experiment to
be performed.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT BEARS.

[Illustration: A COMPANY OF BEARS.]

If you should ever be going up a hill, and should meet such a
procession as that on the opposite page, coming down, I would
recommend you to get just as far to one side as you can possibly go.
Bears, especially when there are so many of them together, are by no
means pleasant companions in a walk.

But it is likely that you might wander about the world for the rest of
your lives, and never meet so many bears together as you see in the
engraving. They are generally solitary animals, and unless you
happened to fall in with a mother and her cubs, you would not be
likely to see more than one at a time.

In our own country, in the unsettled parts of many of the States, the
black bear is still quite common; and I could tell you of places
where, if you pushed carefully up mountain-paths and through lonely
forests, you might come upon a fine black bear, sitting at the
entrance of her cave, with two or t