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Up through mud and black trench-water came the leaf, like a tiny fist of wrinkles, and day by day spread and uncurled, looking like the unwieldy paw of a kitten or cub. The keels and ribs covering the under-side increased in size and strength, and finally the great leaf was ironed out by the warm sun into a mighty sheet of smooth, emerald chlorophyll.

As long as you can keep the bulging side of the umbrella pointed toward the wind, you find no difficulty in holding it; but if the wind strikes the hollow under-side of the umbrella, it pulls so violently that, unless you are able to turn around and face the wind, the chances are that the umbrella will either be pulled away from you or turned inside out.

As the term "miserere" may not be understood by all our readers, it may be well to quote from Parker's "Glossary of Architecture" the following description: "Miserere, Misericorde, Patience, or Pretella, is the projecting bracket on the under-side of the seats of stalls in churches: these, where perfect, are fixed with hinges so that they may be turned up, and when this is done the projection of the miserere is sufficient, without actually forming a seat, to afford very considerable rest to any one leaning upon it.

Here was the true key to the Wilcannia shower; here was the under-side of my imagined precaution against ophthalmia; here was the hidden purpose of that repetitional picking and sorting of the hawker's stock which had left Jack the Shellback his Hobson's choice in coats; here was a Wesleyan converging of the whole vast order of the universe toward the happiest issue.

But, in the next moment, the under-side of that scrawny neck was between the mightiest jaws in the Tinnaburra, and, even as the life blood of old Tasman flowed out between Finn's white fangs, the body of him was being literally torn in sunder by the furiously busy teeth and claws of Warrigal.

The tail-flat was smashed and its box filled with water. "This increased the downward leverage and raised her perpendicularly in the air. At 2.30 P.M. we capsized. We climbed up the nose and 'over the top' to the under-side of the pontoons.

For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their under-side turns to the sun.

Indeed, the missionaries, in their various religious ceremonies, have always made large use of these palm-candles. Another "wax-palm," called "Carnáuba," is found in South America. In this one, the wax of a pure white colour, and without any admixture of resin collects upon the under-side of the leaves, and can be had in large quantities by merely stripping it off.

In a few days I was the possessor of thirty Moles, which were scattered here and there, as they reached me, in bare portions of the orchard, amid the rosemary-bushes, the arbutus-trees, and the lavender-beds. Now it only remained to wait and to examine, several times a day, the under-side of my little corpses, a disgusting task which any one would avoid who had not the sacred fire in his veins.

To remedy this I sawed out a broad slip from a chest-side, and boring a large hole through the centre, I spiked it up to the under-side of the table's bed, with a spindle I contrived just loose enough to play round the head of the spike, filing down that part of the spindle which passed through the bed of the table, and riveting it close; so that when my flaps were set up I pulled the slip crosswise of the table, and when the flaps were down, the slip turned under the top of the table lengthwise: next, under each flap, I nailed a small slip lengthwise of the flaps, to raise them on a level, when up, with the top of the table.