over the mountain roads, I was obliged to their own language!" Upon observing yield.

But what was my amazement a few minutes afterward, when, on hearing a commotion beneath the window, I looked out and saw my duenna seated on a little donkey, loudly contending with the mistress of the inn. As I raised the win dow I heard her say, in her shrill, energetic tones, "Une demoiselle Américaine avec blond cheveux, and a blue dress." Now my tall duenna, seated on a poor short little donkey, at midnight, was rather a ludicrous object to contemplate, and my powers of cachinnation were once more irresistibly excited. Mr. Landreth had just joined me in the window, when the moonlight shone full on my face, and she recognized me. With a glad cry of relief and exultation, she turned to the wondering few who had been attracted by her shrill tones and strange appearance, and said, pointing at me with her finger, La voilà! I told you she was here. Then looking at me, she exclaimed, pathetically: "Margaret, it is so queer these foreigners can't understand

66

Mr. Landreth, her face darkened, and she muttered to herself, as she slowly dismounted from her donkey: "I might have known it. Catch me trying to chaperon another American girl!” Then turning once more in my direction, she said, anxiously, "Margaret, I do hope you haven't lost my umbrella and guide-book; the latter was full of specimens," and entered the house.

As there were but two bedrooms in the house, Mrs. Landreth, Mrs. Mason, and I shared one among us, and never, never will I forget that uncomfortable night on the Tête Noire.

I will just add that the Landreths accompanied us to Geneva and Paris, Mrs. Landreth and my duenna travelling most harmoniously together, and then we all sailed together for New York.

I think I will some day revisit the Tête Noire, but it will not be under the surveillance of Mrs. Mason, but of my brigand hero, who soon expects to be myBut that is out of the story, so I will say nothing about it.

WITH

THE MIMICRY OF NATURE.

The respondencies of Nature are not mere resemblances (as men of narrow observation may possibly imagine), but one and the very same footstep of Nature and her seal, impressed upon various objects. ... A complete body of these axioms hath no man yet prepared, though they have a primitive force and efficacy in all science, and are of such consequence as to materially conduce to the conception of the unity of Nature, which latter we conceive to be the office and use of Philosophia Prima.-LORD BACON. ITH what a delicate pencil has the | it might have been taken for the negative frost silvered the window-pane! The of a photograph from nature, which, infinest and most costly lace, which, per- deed, on the glass it much resembled. chance, holds within its almost microscopic meshes the thought and effort of a whole human life, is inferior to this choice production wrought in the darkness of a single night. Bring the lens nearer, the perfection of finish, the subtlety of the tracery, elude the glass; and yet with what simple, nay, with what meagre, materials this exquisite decoration is accomplished!

Let any one examine the delicate fimbriated petals, of the purest white, belonging to that dainty little blossom of our Northern woods, Miletta nuda, and he shall see the fulfillment of a prophecy made in the depth of winter by a snowflake, which in the symmetry of its six compound crystals exactly prefigures it.

Nature, indeed, in the great variety of That it may not be supposed by persons the six-rayed star spangles of the snow, whose attention has not been particularly seems to find patterns for many such directed to the subject that this represen- flowers of endogens as when expanded tation is fanciful rather than true, a re- are flat and radiate. The mineral kingproduction traced on gelatine from a fer- dom shows at least a prefigurement of rotype taken directly from the frost-work life and living forms. Crystal upon in a shop window in this city, and copied crystal clusters in graceful and symmeton the wood, nearly crystal for crystal, is rical accretion, until from the dull, hard, given. So wonderful is the similitude of indurated mineral or chemical salt spring this frost-picture to one of the great red-forth fairy-like fronds into arborescent woods, the giant trees of California, that forms. Their purity and the translucent

brilliancy of their colors render them the blossoms of inorganic nature. Again, as the crystal is the mineral flower, the flower is the vegetable crystal. The geometrical proportions of crystals re-appear in the symmetrical

native land.

The stalk, which grows to a length of three and sometimes four feet, is surmounted by the buds and blos

soms. The flower, which is not large, is
of a delicate creamy white, and exhales a
faint sweet perfume. One-half of the
flower is upright, the other, folded back,
exposes a most dainty floral grotto, in
which rests, as in a little cup-shaped nest, a tiny
dove with outstretched neck and extended wings
as if about to fly. The dove is of the same
creamy white as the rest of the flower, with
the exception of the upper extremities of the

In its native land the Espiritu Santo is held in religious veneration, and is supposed by the devout though ignorant natives to be a special emanation of the person in the Trinity whose emblem it bears. It is believed that if the flower be rudely plucked from the parent stem, or trampled under foot, the hand or foot which is the guilty agent of the deed will shortly wither and lose all life and power. If, on the contrary, it be plucked with a prayer, and for a good purpose, the hand that culls it will be shortly filled with treasure that must bring joy to the heart of its owner, be

DANCING ORCHIDS.

ing God-given. No wild beast has power posed, and real imitation on the part of to harm the fortunate possessor of a fresh the flower of some creature or parts of a and living blossom of this wonder-work-creature in the animal kingdom. ing plant, and of course it is equally efficacious in sickness.

Let any one possessing the slightest ap

of the dancing orchis (Comparettia coccinea), represented at the bottom of page 864, as it sways in the breeze, the comical gayly colored puppets executing their gro

irresistibly ludicrous affectation of enjoy ing themselves, and then deny, if he can, that this element of the humorous really exists in nature.

Significantly called "air plants," the epiphites, destitute of roots, drawing their sustenance from the elements, vegetable chameleons, daughters of the sun and of the breeze, living upon the air and the dews of heaven, perch upon trees or barren rocks, and lifting themselves away from the earth in which other plants are rooted, flutter on tenuous stems, as if eager to re

In the grotesque flower just above the dove-orchis we enter the region of caricaWonderful as is this mimicry of ani- ture. If it be not thought irreverent to asmal life, it is surpassed in the magnifi-cribe an appreciation of the humorous to cent swan-flower, Cycnoches ventricosum, the Creator, we may imagine we have an which appears in the illustration a little instance of it in the formation of the grinto the left of the flower of the Holy Spirit. ning, straddling suggestion of some unIt may well be questioned if the most in- known but unmistakable species of frog genious artificer could imagine an ar- in the Oncidium raniferum. rangement of the different parts of a blossom, retaining them all, to so per-preciation of the ludicrous look at a spray fectly portray the beautiful water-fowl it mimics. The imitation affords no protection to the plant; it seems in no way connected with its physical well-being; it can not be accounted for by similar hab-tesque dances, and bobbing about with an its in the plant and bird: what, then, is the mysterious law that underlies such mimicries as these? Perhaps, after all, there may be respondencies in nature deeper and more subtle than have ever yet been imagined by scientists. Here, for instance, is the bee-orchis, seen slightly in the background to the right; were it fertilized, as it is not, but as many of the orchids are, by the insect it mimics, how eagerly would it not be seized upon as an instance of the development of mimetic tendencies toward some special profit to be derived therefrom by the object ex-alize the aerial life of the butterflies and hibiting such tendencies! And yet how birds they imitate in form. wonderful the mimicry-the prominent compound eyes of the insect, its general contour, the wings, legs, and proboscis, all intimated by ingenious arrangement of different parts of the flower; and the bright yellow marking on a dusky brown ground, though referable to no known species of the insect, is strongly suggestive of the coloration and parts most common to bees. And here may be noticed a curious peculiarity of many of the mimicries of the orchidaceous tribes: the resemblance is often to some family or class, in general, in the animal kingdom, but to no one particular species, prefiguring, in fact, new combinations of specialities common to the kind mimicked, and hinting at unknown species, which it may not be entirely fanciful to imagine once inhabited, or will at some future period inhabit, the In order to show how, in external reearth. At any rate, the resemblances seem semblance at least, the borders of the sufficiently perfect to warrant the hypoth-vegetable domain overlap the animal, esis of some force, whether answering to an intelligent volition or not, which impels, so to speak, a premeditated, pur

VOL. LIX.-No. 354-55

See, for instance, the Oncidium papilio, top of page 866, which seems actually to take flight on outspread wings as it vibrates with fluctuating movements, rising and falling in the perfume-laden breeze of the tropics. Although called "butterflyorchids," these singular flowers have an unmistakable resemblance to the order of insects called orthoptera, which contains among its numbers our katydid, mantis, and "stick-bug," or walking-stick.

So close is the mimesis of some of these plants that several fine specimens which recently arrived from Mr. Such, the floriculturist, carefully packed in cotton, were shown to a circle of friends, who, unaware of their vegetable origin, admired them and wondered at them as strange and beautiful insects.

an insect resembling a flower, the eyed pterochroza (P. ocellata), is represented just below the real flower (page 866).