16. O pure, placid river, Make music forever, In the Gardens of Paradise, hard by the throne! Gently drifted before, We may find the lost blossoms that once were our own. 17. Ah, beautiful river, Flow onward forever! Thou art grander than Avon, 4 and sweeter than Ayr;5 If a tree has been shaken, If a star has been taken, In thy bosom we look-bud and Pleiad are there! 18. I take up the old words, Like the song of dead birds, That were breathed when I stood farther off from the sea; When the headlands were dim:- Shall I ever again weave a rhythm for thee? Definition.-7. Pellū'çid, clear, admitting the passage of light. Among older writers, pellucid is used in the same sense as transparent, but present usage distinguishes it from this latter word, in not giving a distinct vision of objects seen through a pellucid body. NOTES.-I. Euro clydon, a wind which blows from an easterly point on the Mediterranean Sea, and is very dangerous. 2. Arcturus, one of the brightest stars in the heavens, in the constellation Boötes. 3. Castles in Spain, groundless or visionary projects: so called because there are no castles in that country. 4. Avon. Shakespeare, the greatest dramatic writer of the world, was born in a town on the Avon River, which is one of the most beautiful in England. It is a place of pilgrimage, being immortalized by the poet's fame. 5. Ayr, a river in Scotland, rendered famous by Robert Burns, who lived in its valley and often mentions it in his poems. 6. Pleiad, one of the Pleiades, a group of seven stars, only six of which are visible to the naked eye. According to the ancients, they were seven sisters whom Jupiter transformed into stars. 96. COVERINGS OF SOME ANIMALS. FRANCIS TREVELYAN BUCKLAND (1826-1880) was born in England. He received his education at Oxford, and, after graduating, entered the army as surgeon. He resigned upon his marriage in 1863, and accepted the office of Inspector of Fisheries for England. He was now able to gratify his intense love for animals, and spent many years in endeavoring to improve the condition of the fishing trade, in trying to introduce animals for domestication, and other reforms of like character. His knowledge had more breadth than depth; his style was lively, sometimes eccentric, but always pleasing. The following is adapted from his Life, published in 1885. 1. Ir is very interesting to observe the wonderful way in which the Creator has clothed and ornamented his various creatures. Some live in the water, some on land, some pass their time partly in the water or on land, some exist partly in the air, on the water, and on the land. All are beautifully and wonderfully constructed. I propose to make a few remarks on the external coverings of some of these. 2. In the scales of the fish we find plates of thin horn. These plates are set in a soft pocket of the true skin, and overlap one another so as to form a complete suit of armor— giving origin, no doubt, to the idea of scale armor as worn by our ancestors at the time when arrows were used in battle. The scales of the fish are not all of the same size; they are fitted, like enamel plates, on to the body, so that while they afford the most efficacious protection, they do not interfere in the least with the movements of the fish. 3. In the crocodile, we again find a scale-formed armor. The scales are let into the skin in a different manner from those of the fish, and they are capable of absorbing a considerable amount of water. Before the skin was soaked, it was as hard and inflexible as a board. Having been soaked a few hours, it became as pliable and soft as a wet towel. This is evidently an arrangement to enable the crocodile to pass his time with comfort both in the water and out of the water. A crocodile also has lungs, not gills, and we never find true scales, like those of a fish, unaccompanied by gills. When the crocodile is basking in the sun, his scales are much harder than when they are in the water. 4. In the armadillo we find a series of scales of peculiar shape, not let into pockets as in the fish, but each connected with its neighbor by soft skin, so that the armadillo's skin may be said to be a series of oblong-headed nails fastened. into a covering which forms the skin of the animal. The armadillo has to roll himself into a ball as occasion requires; therefore the studs of his armor are so beautifully fitted as to size and shape, that he can roll them up into a ball without the slightest appearance of crease or wrinkle. 5. In the case of the armadillo, who lives under a covering of horny, flexible skin, please to observe that his backbone, and all other bones, as well as his lungs, heart, and other viscera, are all underneath this flexible roof to his body. In the tortoise we find quite another arrangement. Boil a tortoise shell, and you will find that you can pick off the scales one by one, and that underneath them is a tenterhouse of solid-formed bone. 6. This dome-shaped house is not composed of a continuous mass of bone, as a tea-cup is made of a continuous plate of pottery, but rather of a series of small bones, all properly arched to suit the original curve, and jointed together in a most marvelous manner. The edges of each bone are deeply serrated, or notched, and the serrations fit one into another in such a workmanlike manner that an amount of solidity is gained which could not have been equaled if the whole dome had been cast in a single piece. 7. But how is a tortoise to live in his house? To what are his ribs to be attached? Let us examine. In ordinary animals, the backbone forms an attachment for the ribs, and there are many muscles outside the ribs. In the tortoise, the ribs themselves are actually used to form part of the dome, or roof. By examining the inside of a tortoise shell, the fact will at once become apparent. The ribs will be seen forming the girders of this wonderful roof; and they are connected together by means of the above mentioned plates of bone with denticulated edges, while the center portion of the bone sends down an arch to form a canal in which the spinal marrow is contained. 8. The tortoise therefore lives inside of a house composed of his own ribs formed into a dome, and he rests upon his breast-bone, which is flattened out into a broad plate, to serve, first, for the attachment of the ribs, and, secondly, as a kind of supporting foot or basement. Can there possibly be a more beautiful piece of design than this, which combines economy of material and great strength with lightness? 9. We often find the same design in created things utilized for various purposes. It is, therefore, highly interesting to find that the kind of denticulated suture adopted in the tortoise is present in cur own skulls. A bony box is required to carry and protect the brain; the human skull, therefore, is formed of bones, each being jointed to its neighbor by identically the same kind of union as that in the tortoise. In the human skull there is another meaning for this: the interposition of several lines of sutures all over the skull prevents a fracture of one of the bones of the skull spreading to its neighbor. 10. In the common hedgehog we find a curious bit of mechanism. The hedgehog has no horny studs fastened into the skin as in the armadillo, nor yet has he a boneformed dome, covered with horny scales, as in the tortoise. His horny covering assumes the form of spines, or bristles, each set firmly into the skin at one end, and very sharply pointed at the other end. These bristles the owner can erect in groups, with all the points outwards, presenting a formidable array of weapons; but he has also the power to lay back these sharp-pointed spines so that their points are all turned from his head. 11. The muscles by which these spines are moved are fine strings or fibers similar to the "frowning muscle" in our own foreheads. In fact, when a hedgehog curls himself up, he begins work with a tremendous frown as he tucks his head inwards. The ribs are of unusual strength and abnormal width for so small an animal. The vertebræ are attached to the ribs in a peculiar manner, and each of them fits to its neighbor by a wonderful joint which keeps the chain of bones quite stiff when the animal is walking, but which enables him to coil up into a ball on the slightest provocation. Definitions.-4. Arma dil'lo, an animal peculiar to South America, having the body encased in armor composed of small, bony plates. 7. Den tie'u lā ted, notched into little, tooth-like projections. 9. Sūt'ūre, the seam or joint which unites the bones of the skull. II. Ver'te bra, a joint of the backbone or spinal column, in a fish, bird, quadruped, and in man. 97. WASHINGTON'S SWORD AND FRANKLIN'S STAFF. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS (1767-1848), sixth President of the United States, was born in Massachusetts. He spent some years of his youth in Europe, where even then he gave evidence of the diplomatic skill which afterward distinguished him. Returning to America, he graduated at Harvard College, in which institution he held the professorship of Rhetoric for a short time, and soon after entered political life. After his term as President expired, Mr. Adams entered the House of Representatives, and took part in all important debates, and where he was stricken with paralysis on the 21st of February, 1848. He was carried to the Speaker's room, where he lingered for two days. He was an austere man of great and varied learning. I. THE Sword of Washington! The staff of Franklin! Oh, sir, what associations are linked in adamant with these names! Washington, whose sword was never drawn but in the cause of his country, and never sheathed when wielded in his country's cause! Franklin, the philosopher of the |