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Some bear their flowers in erect spikes, or loose heads; others have drooping racemes a yard in length, as some of the dendrobiums. More have a slender flower-stalk making a graceful curve, with the flowers placed on the uppermost side, as Pholænopsis amablis, which bears a profusion of white blossoms closely resembling large moths with expanded wings.

In the vicinity of this and all other houses, Chili peppers, and a ginger-plant with a drooping flower-stalk with a great number of blossoms, which when not fully developed have a singular resemblance to very pure porcelain tinted with pink at the extremities of the buds, are to be seen growing in "yards," to use a most unfitting Americanism.

Charley brought me the long flower-stalk of Xanthorrhaea from some ridges, which were, doubtless, composed of sandstone. Two kangaroos were seen; they were of middle size, and of a yellowish grey colour, and seemed to live principally about the basaltic ridges.

Sander noted one presently of which the flower-stalk was yellow instead of brown, as is usual. Sharp eyes are a valuable item of the orchid-grower's stock-in-trade, for the smallest peculiarity among such "sportive" objects should not be neglected.

In the last named the common flower-stalk is lacking and the flowers of the umbel seem to be borne in the arils of the basal leaves. In other genera such nearly allied species are more or less universally recognized.

Besides the three leaves on each flower-stalk similar leaves grow from underground stems which creep along not far below the surface of the soil. Such creeping underground stems are usually called "rhizomes." At the further side of the coppice, where a hedge separates it from the little meadow called Home Close, are Sweet Violets.

Coming now to particular instances, we may turn our attention in the first place to the genus Sisymbrium. Two species are reputed to have bracts, Sisymbrium hirsutum and S. supinum. Each flower-stalk of their long racemes is situated in the aril of such a bract, and the peculiarity is quite a natural one, corresponding exactly to what is seen in the inflorescence of other families.

I behold the pita aloe, with its tall flower-stalk and thorny sun-scorched leaves. There is less of animal life here; but even these wild ridges have their denizens. The cochineal insect crawls upon the cactus leaf, and huge winged ants build their clay nests upon the branches of the acacia-tree.

The shaft is made of the flower-stalk of the arrow-grass. The head is composed of hard wood pointed, and sometimes armed with a serrated spine of the ray-fish, covered thickly with poison, and notched, so as easily to break off a most deadly weapon. Their arrows for shooting fish are armed with iron heads, while smaller arrows are used for shooting small game.

Then again, according to a Swedish legend, the dwarf birch tree afforded the rod with which Christ was scourged, which accounts for its stunted appearance; while another legend tells us it was the willow with its drooping branches. But in Poland, where the plant is difficult to procure, "the flower-stalk of the leek is substituted."