Knight, Dutrochet, and Duchartres, all tried
the experiment of planting seeds in flower-pots,
covered with the finest net-work of
wire and turned upside downwards, and
came to the conclusion, that roots will bend
in any direction to escape the light. Dr.
Gardner, of New York, studied the effects
of the sun's rays upon roots, and ascertained,
that if a young and flexible plant is placed
in the shade with its roots growing vertically,
they will continue to grow vertically
until they are subjected to the action of the
sun's rays, when the roots grow sideways
away from them, and only return to their
natural position when replaced in the shade.
This experiment is easily verified by placing
seeds in a square glass-box, full of oxygenised
water. After the seeds have germinated,
the roots may be made to grow in any
direction by subjecting the opposite side of
the glass-box to the influence of an
extraordinary light.

There are only four known exceptions to
this great law: the two varieties of Mirabilis
or Marvel of Peru, and the onion, and the
garlic, which naturally direct their roots
towards the light.

An opinion, which has long been
entertained, is, that roots have a tendency to grow
in the direction of good soil. But, recent
experiments have proved, in regard to certain
plants, at any rate, that plants placed in bad
earth, even pure sand, go along the side of
veins of good earth, without deviating in the
least from their natural direction.

The Germans call the tendency of plants, to
grow straight up and down, Polarity. Knight,
as long ago as eighteen hundred and six,
discovered that this tendency was a fact of
gravitation. Knight first experimented upon
seeds sown in barrels, which were kept
constantly in motion.  But now-a-days the same
result is obtained by placing seeds in earth
half a yard deep, on a wheel, which is kept
turning at the rate of a hundred and fifty
turns a minute, and damped by means of
continual drippings of water. As long as
the wheel turns unerringly, the plants grow
with their stems directed towards the centre,
and the roots flying from the centre. But if
the rotation stops in the smallest degree at
the top of the wheel, the contrary effect is
produced, the roots growing towards the centre,
and the stalks and leaves from the centre.

A very important influence over the
growth of plants is exercised by rays of light
of different colours. It is somewhat difficult
to subject plants to their action, because red
glass alone retains the proper amount of heat
and light. M. Payer, however, was employed
by the French Academy of Sciences to test
the action of the solar spectrum upon plants.
He chose a much spread out spectrum composed
of six colours,—violet, blue, green,
yellow, orange, and red. Having experimented
upon several plants, M. Payer found
that the stalks of plants always lean most
towards the violent ray, which is the most
intense, and has the strongest power of
attraction, and next after the violet to the
blue, the green, the yellow, and the orange,
leaning least of all to the red.

SURREY'S GERALDINE.

ALTHOUGH upwards of forty years have
elapsed since Doctor George Frederick Nott
published two big quartos for the express
purpose of breaking that delicate butterfly
upon the wheel, the charming love-story of
the noble Surrey and the fair Geraldine,
everybody still believes implicitly in it.
Nobody cares one jot for the portentous
discharge of that huge double-barrelled
blunderbuss of criticism at—what? Literally at
nothing more substantial than a beautiful
little bubble blown by Fancy, more than
three centuries ago—a bubble of the
imagination, radiant with all the colours of
the prism, and full of wonders as a wizard's
crystal—still happily floating down to us
unharmed upon the zephyrs of dreamland.

Admitting everything that Doctor Nott
has written on the subject to be perfectly
incontrovertible; acknowledging the reasonableness
of his premises and the stubbornness of
his facts; allowing him to have logically
proved the whole legendary tale to be an
impossibility, yet are we doggedly credulous.

Acknowledge any one among these historical
infidels, Herr Niebuhr, or Doctor Nott,
or Monsieur Thierry, to have satisfactorily
proved his case, and we shall next assuredly
have the Wonders of the World bowled
down by still burlier tomes (folios possibly).
Admit Geraldine to have absolutely
melted into thin air under the scrutiny of
Doctor Nott's analytical microscope, and
we shall have Fair Rosamond herself
banished from the heart of her labyrinth at
Godstow. Nothing will be heard of Canute
rebuking his flatterers on the sea-shore;
any more than of Dionysius rebuking his
courtiers by causing Damocles, to carouse for
one evening with only a hair's breadth 'twixt
life and death. Sweeping aside from the past as
worthless little historical atoms such as these,
is shredding ruthlessly from the tree of
knowledge the umbrageous verdure, the rosy
flowers and the yellowing fruit, to leave
nothing beneath them but the dry and sapless
branches.

A delightful vagabond, one Thomas Nash,
was the first to tell the history of Surrey's
Geraldine. Nash is, among our prose writers,
what Elkanah Settle was among our poets—
the very bathos incarnate. He is generally
mentioned as the notorious Nash. His book
was published in fifteen hundred and ninety-
four, under the title of The Life of Jack
Wilton, otherwise designated The
Unfortunate Traveller. Jack Wilton was nothing
better than a tapster in the reign of King
Henry the Eighth: a roving blade who,