ing over the dark plain, in order that even the ashes from the past crop may tend to feed the coming one. That swarthy-looking fellow you see over there, Ben, with a basket on his arm, is a sweep sowing soot broadcast for the same purpose. Down by the shore, again, the people are out with their wagons collecting sea-weed with a like object. At the salt-marshes, too, you perceive the cowherd is busy opening the sluices, so that the tide, as it flows, may moisten the rich meadows upon which the cattle are grazing.

"On the other hand," continued the old man, as he pointed to the several objects about him, "the tiny vessels yonder, that look like so many white gulls as they skim the broad bay, are those of the fishermen gathering supplies for to-morrow's market. That noble-looking Indiaman, with the men, like a swarm of bees about its yards, gathering in the pouting sails as it enters the harbor, is laden with teas and spices from the East; and that line of craft moored beside the 'Long wharf,' with the cranes dipping into their holds, is landing bags of sugar from the Western Indies. The drove of cattle halting there to drink at the road-side pool, and with their reflected images coloring the water like a painting, have come from the distant prairies to swell our butchers' stores. The white figure you can just see at the top of yon mill is that of the miller's man, guiding the dangling sacks of flour on their way down to be carted off to the city. The very birds of the air-the crows now cawing as they fly over head; the swallows twittering as they skim zigzag across the surface of the pools; the white gull yonder, that has just settled down on the waves; the hawk poised above the wood waiting for the coming pigeon-are one and all in quest of food.

the same errand. The big bee buzzing in the flower-cup at our feet; the tiny ants, that are hardly bigger than motes in the sunbeam, hurrying to and fro in the grass; the spider, that has spun his silken net across the twigs of the adjacent hedge, are all quickened with the cravings of their bigger fellow-creatures. Indeed, the sportsman on the hills above, whose gun now makes the woods chatter again, is there only from the same motive as is stirring the insects themselves. And you yourself, Ben-but look at your float, lad! look at your float! The bobbing of it tells you that the very fish, like the birds and the insects, the sportsmen and the husbandmen round about, have left their lurking-places on the same hungry mission. Strike, boy, strike!"

As the uncle said the words, the delighted youngster seized the rod, and twitched a plumplooking chub, struggling, from the pool.

In a few minutes the prize was stored away in the fish-basket they had brought with them, and the float once more dancing in the shade above the newly-baited hook in the water.

And when the rod was speared anew in the ground beside the brook, Uncle Ben said to his nephew, as the little fellow flung himself down on the bank slope, "Can you understand now, my little man, why I brought you out to fish ?"

The lad looked up in his uncle's good-humored face, and smiled as the solution of the morning's riddle flashed across his mind.

"Why, to teach me, uncle, that every thing that lives seeks after its food," answered the younger Benjamin, delighted with the small discovery he had made; for as yet he had never shaped in his mind the cravings of creatures into any thing approximating to a general law.

"Hardly that, my little man," replied the uncle,

F

The boy cast his eyes once more over the broad expanse of nature before him, and said, hesitatingly, "The animals are all seeking after food, and-and-"

"The husbandmen are busy in the fields, taking food to the plants," added Uncle Benjamin, helping the little fellow to work out the problem.

"The one form of life goes after its food, and the other has it brought to it."

The old man paused for a minute, so that the lad might well digest the difference.

"The distinctive quality of an animal," he then went on, "is that it seeks its own living, whereas a plant must have its living taken to it."

"I see," said Benjamin, thoughtfully.

"An animal," said the uncle, "can not thrust its lower extremities into the ground, and drink up the elements of its trunk and limbs from the soil, like the willow-tree there on the opposite bank, whose roots you can see, like a knot of writhing snakes, piercing the earth all round about it. Unlike the tree and the shrub, Ben, the animal is endowed with a susceptibility of feeling, as wel as fitted with a special and exquisitely beautifulTM apparatus for motion. The sentient creature is

thus not only gifted with a sense of hunger to tell him instinctively (far better than any reason could possibly do) when his body needs refreshment, but, in order to prevent his sitting still and starving with pleasure (as he assuredly would have. done if hunger had been rendered a delight to him), this very sense of hunger has, most benevolently, been made painful for him to suffer for any length of time. Now it is the pain or uneasiness of the growing appetite that serves to sting the muscles of his limbs into action at frequent and regular intervals, and to make him stir in quest of the food that is necessary for the reparation of his frame; and, what is more, the allaying of the pain of the protracted appetite itself has been rendered one of the chief pleasures of animal nature."

"How strange it seems, uncle, that I never thought of this before; for, now you point it out to me, it is all so plain that I fancy I must have been blind not to have noticed it," was all that the nephew could say, for the new train of thought started in his brain was hurrying him away with its wild crowd of reflections.

"Rather it would have been much stranger, Ben, could you have discovered it alone; for such matters are visible to the mind only, and not to be noted by the mere eyes themselves," the uncle made answer.

"I understand now," exclaimed the boy, half musing; "all animals must stir themselves in order to get food."

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Ay, my lad; but there is another marked difference between animals and plants," continued the uncle, "and that will explain to us why even food itself is necessary for animal subsistence. A tree, you know, boy, is inactive - that willow

would remain where it is till it died unless moved by some one-and there is, therefore, little or no

waste going on in its frame; hence the greate part of the nutriment it derives from the soil an air is devoted to the growth or strengthening of its trunk and limbs. But the chief condition of animal life is muscular action, and muscular action can not go on without the destruction of the tis sues themselves. After a hard day's exercise, men are known to become considerably lighter, or, in other words, to have lost several pounds' weight of their bodily substance. Physicians, too, assure us that the entire body itself becomes changed every seven years throughout life: the hair, for instance, is forever growing, the nails are being continually pared away, the breath is always carrying off a certain portion of our bulk, the blood is hourly depositing fresh fibre and absorbing decayed tissues as it travels through the system; transpiration, again, is forever going on, and can only be maintained by continual drains upon the vital fluids within. Even if we sit still, our body is at work-the heart beating, the lungs playing, the chest heaving, the blood circulating; and all this, as with the motion of any other engine (even though it be of iron), must be attended with more or less friction or rubbing away of the parts in motion, and consequently with a slower or quicker wearing out or waste of the body itself."

"I should never have thought of that, uncle," observed the youth.

"It is this waste, lad, which, waking or sleeping, moving or resting, is forever going on in the animal frame, that makes a continual supply of food a vital necessity with us all. Food, indeed, is to the human machine what coals are to Savery's wonderful steam-engine-the fuel that is necessary to keep the apparatus in motion; and, as a chaldron of coal applied to a steam boiler will do