And he walked gently out of the room, and,
as he passed the window, Mr. Hardie heard his
great heart sob.

He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
"A hard tussle," thought he, "and with my
own unnatural, ungrateful, flesh and blood: but
I have won it: he hasn't told the Dodds; he
never will: and, if he did, who would believe
him, or them?"

At dinner there was no Alfred; but after
dinner a note to Jane informing her he had
taken lodgings in the town, and requesting her
to send his books and clothes in the evening.
Jane handed the note to her father: and sighed
deeply. Watching his face as he read it, she
saw him turn rather pale, and look more
furrowed than ever.

"Papa!" said she, "what does it all mean?"

"I am thinking."

Then, after a long pause, he ground his teeth
and said, "It means—WAR."

THE PITCHER-PLANT.

EARLY in the winter of 1860, a little coasting
vessel landed her crew, nearly all ill of smallpox,
at a fishing village a few miles from Halifax,
the capital of Nova Scotia. Full soon, the
epidemic spread, from the sailors to the fishermen,
and from the fishermen to the fish-dealers in the
town of Halifax. Cases of variola becoming
numerous in the civil and military hospitals, the
attention of the medical profession was aroused,
and a panic seized the population. When the
alarm in the city was greatest, news arrived that
the plague had burst out in the encampments of
the Indians, destroying the red population as
fire destroys the parched vegetation of the
prairies. For, the Indians neglect vaccination,
and deem the skill of white men "no good."
But, when Death was rife in the camps of the
red people, and the plague was sweeping off
whole families at a time, a Squaw, long renowned
for her knowledge of roots and herbs, arrived
among the suffering families, declaring she had
an infallible remedy for the disease. And, strange
to say, the epidemic variola, which is borne upon
the wings of the wind to great distances a
veritable pestilence walking in darkness and
which had baffled and defied the highest medical
skill, gave way before the remedy of the Red
Squaw.

This remedy is a pitcher-plant. I have one
of these wonder-working plants now lying before
me. Many specimens have been sent to Europe
for study and trial; and botanists, chemists, and
medical men, have had their attention drawn to
their qualities. Never has there been seen a
plant better qualified to strike the imagination.
Growing in morasses, it is an amphibious plant,
constructed both for aquatic and aërian life.
Most of its life is spent under water. During
winter it is under water; and its fibrous roots
and creeping branches remain in the mud when
it makes its summer sojourn in the air. The roots
are not like roots, but are like tendrils; and the
branches are not like branches, but are like roots,
being of the kind called rhizomes. As for the
leaves and stalks, they have hitherto beat all the
botanists in their attempts to say which is which:
some calling them the one, and some the other.
An omni-captious critic might contradict you if
you called the stalk the leaf, or the leaf the stalk.
Some authors say the pitcher is made of the stalk
(petiole), and others say the leaf; and both
statements are right, and both are wrong. The mud-
covered root-like branch is rather less than half
an inch thick; and the stalk or leaf clasps it half
round, and then rises in a line of beauty, or
graceful curve, bulging out into a pitcher of
an elegant form, seven or eight inches high.

What part of the plant is it which becomes this
pitcher, the leaf or the stalk? We must, to
answer this question, bear in mind that a stalk is
a support, and that a leaf is a breathing instrument
or vegetal gill. Now, if one of these pitchers be
examined carefully, it will be seen that what has
been called vaguely the pitcher, consists of two
parts, three-fourths of the circumference forming
the pitcher, and one-fourth being the undivided
stalk or support. The leaf is joined on to its
stalk, sideways. Physiologists tell us that the
curves of the human back describe the line
adapted best for strength, and the curves of this
plant are similar. The pitcher, with its cover,
forms a leaf or breathing organ of a very singular
kind. If you cut it open from the bottom to
the rim, you will be struck by three different
portions of it; at the bottom and half way
upward, the inside is brownish, and lined with
long fine silky hairs; from the end of this part
to the rim, the inside is perfectly smooth;
above half the rim or lip, rises a blade (lamina)
in the shape of a hood, which is lined with short
rough hairs. When the bottom part of the
pitcher is opened, it is found to be full of as
miscellaneous a hoard of tiny things as ever filled
a cornucopia—winged seeds and insects' eggs,
morsels of twigs, and mosses, and flowers, heads,
skins, and wings of flies, and quite a glittering
heap of the blue chests and shields of beetles. I
have found but one tolerably complete insect—
an ichneumon-fly of a kind I never saw before,
only without a head. Five or six of these
pitcher-like stalk-leaves rise up in a group or
row, and among them is the flower. The flower
rests upon a stalk, which, like the leaves, clasps
the branch, consisting of five sepals and five
petals, all purple. An idea of its appearance
might be formed by imagining a purple
marigold.

The botanists are at their wits' end to explain
and classify this plant. Known in England, it
is said, since 1640, it was called Sarracenia by
Tournefort, in the end of the seventeenth
century, after a Dr. Sarrasin, who introduced it
into France. The classifiers are puzzled where
to put it. Its nearest connexions, according to
Dr. Lindley, are the poppyworts. There are