The Phantom Bouquet. By Edward Parrish. (A. Bennet.)—Under this rather
fanciful title, a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia has condescended to oblige the public with a popular treatise on a certain pleasing drawing-room accomplishment, which he designates as "the art of skeletonizing leaves and seed-vessels, and adapting them to embellish the home of taste." But, perhaps, there is, after all, not much condescension in the matter, for the art in question is, if Mr. Parrish's estimate of it may be accepted, by no means of a trivial nature. After passing through a series of chapters on "maceration," "bleaching," "mounting," and so on, we come at last to a section headed " /Esthetics," from which we learn that skeleton leaves are "not desti- tute of that highest function of nature and art—to lift the soul from grovelling things up to the regions of poetry and love." This function it accomplishes in various ways, especially by being "typical of that bidden spiritual outline obscured by the grossness of the animal nature, but which, through that love which is infinite, may survive the inevit- able decay, to shine for ever in spotless purity and beauty." The reader will perceive that a mere string of dry instructions is by no means all that Mr. Parrish gives him for his money.
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