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If we compare any of the Phyllocactuses with Cereus triangularis, or with C. speciosissimus, we shall find that the flowers are precisely similar both in form and colour, and sometimes also in size. In all the kinds the stem is compressed laterally, so as to look as if it had been hammered out flat; or sometimes it is three-angled, and the margins are deeply notched or serrated.

The others are abundant and are sometimes accompanied by the little gold fern, Gymnogramme triangularis, and rarely by the curious little Botrychium simplex, some of them less than an inch high. The finest of all the rock ferns is Adiantum pedatum, lover of waterfalls and the finest spray-dust.

Two of them viz., C. flagelliformis and C. Mallisoni are generally grafted on the stem of some erect, slender Cereus or Pereskia, or they may be worked on to the stem of a climbing Cereus, such as C. triangularis, in such a way as to hang from the roof of a house.

We saw a very large specimen of C. triangularis, which last autumn suddenly rotted at the base, from some cause or other, and to save the specimen, a mound was built up of brick rubble and soil, high enough to surround the base of the plant above the rotted part. In a few weeks there was a good crop of new roots formed, and the plant has since flowered most satisfactorily.

Strange to say, the perfections of Spinoza, which appear so clear to him, are without any moral character whatever; and for men to speak of the justice of God, he tells us, is but to see in him a reflection of themselves; as if a triangle were to conceive of him as eminenter triangularis, or a circle to give him the property of circularity.