living prayer-would be heard from some who had no other public vocation: the word of the ministry would go forth in the name of the Lord, and not be confined to the two or three who may have long borne that burden which ought to have been shared by others. If our meetings for worship were like this, would not many come from the east and from the west, and have fellowship with us? Is there any reason why our next meeting for worship should not be such? Let each ask himself this question, remembering that He is faithful who hath pronounced the invitation, "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it."

Let us believe in it. Let us pray for it; let us wait for it, and, when it is given, let us become the channels whereby it shall flow forth into all the world.

SARAH S.

NOTES ON LIFE AND ITS DEVELOPMENTS.

LIFE, whether animal or vegetable, is an immaterial, but a real state of existence. It is propagated in individual course, in each distinct species. And each species, however closely allied to other species and capable of being classed with others, so as to be associated in a genus with them, still maintains its own distinct character.

In its distinct character, each distinct species, in its propagation and continuance, attracts to itself matter, according to the Divine fiat in its creation, and in regard to its maintenance, and through all its changes.

The various species may be regarded as parallel lines, composed of innumerable distinct individuals, each possessing the character of the species to which it belongs, and continued from the period of its creation to the present time, except in cases where it has ceased to exist.

Many species, under the influence of domestication or culture, break off from the normal type into varieties; but these varieties retain their specific identity, so that it has yet to be shown that, in any single instance, one species, animal or vegetable, has passed into another species, or is in progression toward such a change.

There is a tendency in varieties from the normal form, whether in shape or colour, to produce other varieties, still retaining the characters of the species to which they belong; and there is also a tendency to return to the normal type, so strong as to require constant attention from cattle breeders and horticulturists in the selection of individuals from which to perpetuate the desired varieties, in order to counteract

Animals and plants seem universally to be liable to the variety called Albino. This, in animals, is marked by red eyes and white skin and hair or feathers; and in plants, by white or yellow fruit, white flowers, and pale bark. Trees and shrubs of this character, such as the Yellow-berried Holly, and Privet, and Mountain Ash, are multiplied by grafting or by cuttings, as they cannot be depended on to reproduce the same varieties from seed.

Some species of animals, as well as of plants, are so nearly allied in structure as to be capable of intermixing, and thus producing hybrid offspring. But these hybrids are distinct in character from varieties, combining the features of the two parents, and generally being sterile. Some of them, at least, retain so strong a tendency to return to their normal types, that they will produce seed if fertilized with the pollen of either parent, and in two or three generations will reach the normal form and become fertile. This has been proved to be the case with the hybrid Narcissi, such as N. biflorus, a hybrid between N. poeticus and N. Tazetta, and as N. incomparabilis, the varieties of which are the offspring of a series of hybrids between N. pseudoNarcissus and N. poeticus.

Bulbous-rooted hybrids may be infinitely multiplied by the increase in number of their bulbs; but this multiplication is only a subdivision of the one life of the original seedling hybrid, the character of which it maintains without variation, and is to be clearly distinguished from the increase of true species by seed, in which each seedling may vary in some respect from the others of its own species.

The true bulbous species also multiply infinitely by the increase in the number of their bulbs; but this, as in the case of hybrids, is only a subdivision of the one life of the original seedling, and bears all its particular marks.

The Purple Laburnum exhibits in a remarkable manner the tendency to return to normal form. It has been suggested that this plant, combined of Cytisus Laburnum and C. purpureus, may have been produced by grafting; but among the countless number of trees and shrubs annually multiplied by grafting, no case is known of the graft and stock entering into a homogeneous combination such as is presented by the Purple Laburnum. This plant, or rather tree, has all the characteristics of a true hybrid in all its parts; and it proclaims which were its parents by frequently throwing out branches of Laburnum and branches of C. purpureus. The flowers of the Purple Laburnum are of a dull purple colour, and are sterile; but those of C. Laburnum thrown out by it are bright yellow and fertile, and the seeds produced by them vegetate. The C. purpureus thrown out by the Purple Laburnum has slender twiggy branches exactly agreeing with C. purpureus in its normal character as it grows on the earth.

When plants are multiplied by bulbs, tubers, buds, cuttings, or grafts, however infinite this multiplication may be, the life they possess is not an independent life, like that of a plant raised from seed; but it is a mere division of the independent life of the seedling plant from which in each kind it was divided, and it retains the exact character of the plant from which it was divided; while seedlings may vary, within a specific range, to a considerable degree.

Some species of animals and plants are polymorphous, forming distinguishable races, but still retaining their specific identity, as men, dogs, domestic pigeons and poultry, and among plants, those of the cabbage tribe, &c. The individuals of each of these species, how much soever they may differ in race, associate freely, and their mulatto or mongrel offspring, unlike most hybrids, are fertile.

A remarkable deviation from the ordinary habit of a plant occurs in a species of Loranthus, in New South Wales. Ordinarily it grows as a bushy parasite, on various trees, and under these circumstances has, in addition to the common parasitical incorporation with the foster tree, an external root, closely united with the bark of the tree and of considerable extent. But when it happens to sow itself on another species of Loranthus it dispenses with this external root, yet retains its own specific identity.

The life of each individual, of each species of animal or vegetable, can only attract to itself and organize matter according to its kind, as fixed in its creation, whether it be man after his kind, "the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind," or "grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself after his kind." And it is only in it mature stage that each is capable of reproducing individuals of its own kind, with the character and powers of the parent. But many of them in their progress towards this stage change their organic cases or bodies.

The life of a plant is identical with the life of the seed from which it sprang; but the life has changed its case or body. Thus, if grain be sown, it will be "bare grain; it may chance of wheat or of some other grain, but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him; and to every seed its own body." If the seed sown be grain, its original case will remain in the ground and be decomposed there; but the new body

or case developed from it will spring up and grow by the energy of that which was the life of the seed, until the plant arrives at its perfect state, producing seed to perpetuate its own kind, for it cannot develop itself into any other species.* In many other kinds of plants the

* The statements sometimes made respecting oats cut down and kept shorn producing barley in the second or third year, and other