bodies. As the panther moved about it collected the seeds on the skin
and carried them about wherever it went; but when it rubbed against
the shrubs, it of necessity brushed some off, and thus distributed
them. One of the seeds produced a handsome plant, and beautiful
clusters of tubular flowers. It was immediately recognized to be the
_Martynia diandra_--a plant which, although introduced into England as
far back as 1731, has scarcely ever been cultivated, although it has
been commented on by botanists and other writers.

* * * * *

FOR POSTERITY--A SUGGESTION.

The Irish gentleman who declined to aid an enterprise for the benefit
of posterity, remarking that posterity had never done anything for
him, was, after all the sport made of him, no unfair representative of
the bulk of mankind. There is talk enough about doing great things for
the advantage of future ages, but the real motive is apt to be
something very different. To perpetuate their own name or fame, men or
nations often set up lasting monuments, and sometimes unintentionally
convey thereby to after times a few more or less instructive
indications of the artistic or industrial skill of their day and
generation. To further their own immediate ends, or to secure some
benefit to their immediate descendants, men frequently undertake great
material enterprises, and sometimes the work so done remains for ages
the source of perennial good. But very rarely, if ever, can it be said
that any work of man was undertaken solely, or even chiefly, for the
benefit of posterity--more rarely still, for remote posterity.

Hence it happens that we owe far more to accident, to fire, rapine,
volcanic outbursts, and the protecting care of desolation, for the
knowledge we have of times long past, than to any intentional legacies
of art or learning left us by the men of those times. The lost and
abandoned tools, weapons, and ornaments of the stone age are all that
we have to tell us of the childhood of humanity. Had no fiery
disasters ever overtaken the pile-dwellers of the Swiss lakes, we
should probably have never heard of such a people.

To the mud and ashes of Vesuvius, rather than to the historians of the
Roman Empire, we owe the best of our knowledge of how Roman cities
looked and Roman citizens lived eighteen hundred years ago. In the
fragments of a _terra cotta_ library, buried in the ruins of a royal
palace, we find almost our only