FECUNDITY OF PLANTS.

THE rapidity with which individual species have the power of multiplying their numbers, both in the animal and vegetable world, is well worthy of observation.

Our attention has been more forcibly attracted to this subject by reading the following fact in an Irish newspaper:-" During the past season a single grain of potato oats, on the lands of the Rev. Mr. Mills, Ballywillan, near Coleraine, produced thirty-two stalks, all growing from the same root, and containing in all nearly 5,000 grains of corn.

If each of these 5,000 grains were, in the ensuing year, to be endued with the same power of fecundity as their parent seed, 25,000,000 grains would be produced; and these multiplying once again, in the same ratio, would yield a harvest of oats which would amount to nearly 30,000 quarters.

But though this be a remarkable instance of fruitfulness, there are cases on record which afford still greater evidence of the prolific properties of the grain-bearing plants. Of these several examples are to be found in the volume on Vegetable Substances used for the Food of Man." We select the following quotation from Sir Kenelm Digby, who asserted, in 1660, that "there was in the possession of the fathers of the Christian doctrine, at Paris, a plant of barley which they at that time kept as a curiosity, and which consisted of 249 stalks, springing from one root or grain, and in which they counted above 18,000 grains or seeds of barley."

In the same volume there is another well-authenticated fact relative to the power of increase residing in wheat. The result, however, was in this instance obtained by careful cultivation. As the plant tillered or sent up stalks, it was divided and subdivided, till at length the original root was multiplied into 500 plants, each of which produced more than forty ears. "The wheat, when separated from the straw, weighed fortyseven pounds and seven ounces, and measured three

pecks and three quarters, the estimated number of grains being 576,840.""

The seeds of many kinds of vegetables are so numerous that, if the whole produce of a single plant were put into the earth, and again this second produce were made to yield a harvest, and so on, in a very few years the entire surface of the earth would be too limited for the sowing of the seed thus abundantly supplied. The hyoscyamus, or henbane, which, of all known plants, produces the greatest number of seeds, would for this purpose require no more than four years. According to some experiments the hyoscyamus produces more than 50,000 seeds; but assuming the number to be only 10,000, the seeds would amount, at the fourth crop, to 10,000,000,000,000,000, and as the quantity of solid land on the surface of the globe is calculated to be about 1,400,350,599,014,400 square feet, it follows that each square foot must contain seven plants, and therefore the whole earth would be insufficient to contain the produce of a single hyoscyamus at the end of the fourth year.

BIOGRAPHICAL DEPARTMENT.

JOHN LOCKE.

The author of the Essay on the human understanding was unquestionably one of the deepest thinkers and most profound reasoners that ever lived: his writings did as much to extend our knowledge of the world of mind, as

those of Newton did for that of the material universe; and besides the general gratitude to which his labours, as a philosopher, entitle him, he has special claims to the consideration of Americans, as a sufferer in the cause of liberty, and the advocate of those constitutional principles which justify our revolution. He was, moreover, employed by the Chancellor of the exchequer in drawing up the fundamental constitution of Carolina, and was befriended by William Guen; when in consequence of being accused of the authorship of certain tracts against the government, he was arbitrarily ejected from his studentship of Christ, church by the King's command. Locke was born at Wrington in Somersetshire on the 29th of August 1632. His father was a captain in the service of parliament during the civil war. At a proper age young Locke was sent to Westminster school and in 1651 was elected to Christ Church College, Oxford. After a course of study in which he distinguished himself by his great application, and proficiency, he took the degree of Master of Arts in 1658, and then applied himself to the study of Physic. In 1666 he was introduced, in his medical capacity to Lord Ashley, afterwards the celebrated Earl of Shaftesbury, who formed so high an opinion of his general powers that he prevailed upon him to take up his residence in his house, and urged him to apply his studies to politics and philosophy. In 1670 he began to form the plan of his Essay on the human understanding, and about the same time he was made a fellow of the Royal Society. While Lord Shaftesbury was in power, he was employed in various public capacities and when that nobleman was obliged to retire to Holland, he accompanied him in his exile. After the death of his patron, aware that his liberal principles had rendered him odious to the predominant faction at home, he chose to remain abroad, which he did until the revolution, when he returned to England in the fleet which conveyed the princess of Orange; and being deemed a sufferer for the principles on which the revolution was established, he was presented with a public employment. During his absence in Holiand he had

written his first Letter concerning Toleration, and soon after his return to England he was gratified by the establishment of toleration by law. In 1690 he published his celebrated Essay concerning the human understanding, which he had also written in Holland, and which soon extended his reputation throughout Europe. This great work, which he was nineteen years in preparing, owes its existence to a dispute at which he was present. and which he perceived to rest entirely on a verbal misunderstanding; and conceiving this to be a common source of error, he was led to investigate the subject of the origin of our ideas &c. In the result of his investigations he gave the first example in the English language of a treatise on an abstract subject, written with simplicity and perspicuity. No author has more successfully pointed out the danger of ambiguous words, and o having indistinct notions on the subject of judgment and reasoning; while his observations on the various powers of the human understanding, on the use and abuse of words, and on the extent and limits of human knowledge, are drawn from an attentive reflection on the operations of his own mind.

In order to study the human soul, he went neither to ancient nor to modern philosophers for advice, but he turned within himself, and after having long contemplated his own mind, he gave his reflections to the world. The effect which his writings have had upon the opinions and over the fortunes of mankind constitutes the best eulogium on his mental superiority.

In 1690 Locke published his second Letter on Toleration, and in the same year appeared his two Treatises on Government, in opposition to the principles of the passive obedience school. In 1692 he published a third Letter on Toleration, and the following year his thoughts on Education. Next to his great work on the human understanding, unquestionably stand his two Treatises on Government, in which he exposes the weakness of the theorists of divine right and passive obedience; this was a favourite work with statesmen of the American Revolution, by whom it was constantly appealed to in their con

stitutional arguments. In 1695 he published his Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures, which from its supposed leaning to Socinianism involved him in various controversies; these, however, were distinguished by remarkable mildness and urbanity. An asthmatic complaint, to which he had long been subject, now increased so much in violence, that Locke retired from the prefer, and also resigned his public employment, observing that he could not in conscience hold a situation to which a considerable salary was attached, without performing the duties of it. From this time he lived wholly in retirement, where he applied himself to the study of the Scriptures.

Locke continued nearly two years in a declining state, and at length expired in a manner corresponding with his piety, equanimity and rectitude of life, on the 28th of October, 1704. He was buried at Oater, where there is a neat monument erected to his memory, with a modest latin inscription, indited by himself.

The house in which Locke was born, may still be