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If I had not gone to Italy, I should not have hesitated to give my preference to the mild climate of Paris, where health and beauty are the natural result of a warm temperature, almost semi-tropical in mildness, and where the highest art assists to make every grace shine. But when I saw how nature dotes upon Italy, I felt as if she was only acting the step-mother to the rest of the world.

Thus trapped and helpless, the bright waters, with all their life, fell under the constant, fierce, beating rays of the semi-tropical sun and shrank from the wearing sweep of the dry, tireless winds.

For no other reason, surely, would the cold grey steep-roofed little boxes be repeated so faithfully in the broad glow of a semi-tropical landscape. There was an attempt at a "lawn," the pet ambition of the transplanted easterner; and a further attempt at "flower-beds," which merely served as a sort of springboard to their far-reaching products.

I believe that what you call the instincts of race are only the prejudices which are the result of custom and education, and if there is any instinct in the matter it is rather the instinct of nature to make a Semi-tropical race in a Semi-tropical climate.

To the far Northerner, brought up in only a common-school knowledge of olive trees, palms, eucalyptus, oranges, banana trees, pomegranates and the ordinary semi-tropical fruits, there is something delightful and wonderful in the first sight of them living and flourishing in the open.

The day following our arrival at the water was one of intense heat, and had we experienced such on our journey, neither men nor horses could ever have accomplished it; most grateful did we feel, therefore, to that merciful Being who had shrouded us from a semi-tropical sun, at a time when our exposure to it would have ensured our destruction.

Lord Derby has agents collecting for him in every part of the world, and has been very successful in rearing many birds from tropical and semi-tropical countries in confinement, which have baffled the efforts of zoological societies. The aviaries are arranged on a large scale, with shrubs growing in and water flowing through them.

The ground was of a low character, typical of northeastern Mississippi, and abounded in small creeks that went almost totally dry even in short periods of drought, but became flooded with muddy water under the outpouring of rain peculiar to a semi-tropical climate.

Spreading trees spring from a prodigal luxuriance of undergrowth; great dark green shadows fade into the black background, until all is one mass of tangled semi-tropical foliage, marvellous in its weird savage splendor.

Sitting close to the outer edge of the drive, about ten feet apart, commencing at the corners of the porch on either side, were rows of potted palms extending around the curve, one hundred and fifty feet each way the palms gradually growing smaller as the distance from the cottage became greater. The effect was beautifully unique and suggestively semi-tropical.