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the game furnishes occasion for many a sly trick; one of the parties secretly stealing the other's leaf, and then demanding proof that he has it; and sometimes also it is purposely dropped, when the penalty to be paid is not too

severe.

CYPRESS.

MOURNING.

The Cypress is the emblem of mourning.

SHAKSPEARE.

ACCORDING to Ovid, the Cypress derived its name from Cyparissos, an especial friend of Apollo's, who, in grief at having inadvertently killed a favourite stag of his, prayed the gods that his mourning might be made perpetual, and was changed into a Cypress tree, the branches of which were thenceforward used at funerals.

Wherever these trees meet our view, their doleful look excites melancholy ideas. Their tall pyramids, pointing to the sky, moan when shaken by the wind. The sun's rays cannot penetrate through their gloom, and when his last beams throw their long shadows upon the ground, you would almost take them for dark phantoms. Sometimes the Cypress raises its head among the flowery tenants of our shrub

beries, like those representations of death which the Romans were accustomed to show to their guests even amid the transports of boisterous mirth.

The ancients consecrated the Cypress to the Fates, the Furies, and Pluto. They placed it near tombs. The people of the East have retained the same custom. Their cemeteries are not scenes of desolation and neglect. Covered with trees and flowers, they are places of public resort, which are continually bringing together the living and the dead. The favourite tree for burial-grounds is the Cypress, which the Turks plant not only at the head and foot, but also upon the graves of deceased friends. Such, indeed, is their reverence for the dead, that they frequent the cemeteries more than the mosques themselves, for the purpose of prayer and religious meditation. There are many pious Mussulmans, who do not suffer a day to pass without praying at the grave of their parents, children, relatives, or friends. You may see at every hour of the day and even of the night some person or other either watering or planting fragrant shrubs and flowers in these abodes of peace.

The common European evergreen Cypress is a very long-lived tree, and attains to a great size. According to Pliny, there were Cypress trees growing in his time at Rome, which were more ancient than the city itself. Bartholdy makes mention of one at Misitra, which was thirty feet in circumference. The American species, one of the largest trees in the United States, is sometimes found of the same girth, and seventy feet high: its branches extend almost horizontally.

The wood of the Cypress is remarkable for its durability. Many of the chests containing the Egyptian mummies are of this material, affording a decisive proof of its almost imperishable nature. We are further assured that the gates of St. Paul's Church at Rome, made of Cypress wood, which had lasted from the time of Constantine, eleven hundred years, were as fresh as new when Pope Eugenius IV. ordered gates of brass to be erected in their stead.

MARVEL OF PERU.

TIMIDITY.

THIS beautiful plant was first brought to Spain from Peru, and received its name from the wonderful diversity of colours in the flowers on the same root,

changing from the splendid rose To the pale violet's dejected hue.

AKENSIDE.

The French call it Belle de Nuit, because its flowers, apparently too timid to expand, even to a European meridian sun, open and give out their fragrance at night only.

The Marvel of Peru retains its beauty for a great length of time, being frequently covered with blossoms from the beginning of July to the end of October, and the flowers are so numerous that the plants have a most cheerful appearance, particularly towards evening, as they rarely expand in warm weather before the hour of four in the afternoon, on which account

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