suggest something metallic rather than vegetable, the bronze green hue and lance-like form of their foliage has an arid hard character that makes one think they could be manufactured quite as well as cultivated.  At first I was extremely delighted with the novelty of their appearance; but now I feel thirsty when I look at them, and the same with their kinsfolk the yuccas and their intimate friends, if not relations, the prickly pears, with all of which once strange growth I have grown, contemptuously familiar now.

Did it ever occur to you what a strange affinity there is between the texture and colour of the wild vegetables of these sandy southern soils, and the texture and colour of shells?  The prickly pear, and especially the round little cactus plants all covered with hairy spikes, are curiously suggestive of a family of round spiked shells, with which you, as well as myself, are, doubtless, familiar; and though the splendid flame colour of some cactus blossoms never suggests any nature but that of flowers, I have seen some of a peculiar shade of yellow pink, that resembles the mingled tint on the inside of some elaborately coloured shell, and the pale white and rose flowers of another kind have the colouring and almost texture of shell, much rather than of any vegetable substance.

To-day I walked out without Jack, and in spite of the terror of snakes with which he has contrived slightly to inoculate me, I did make a short exploring journey into the woods.  I wished to avoid a ploughed field, to the edge of which my wanderings had brought me; but my dash into the woodland, though unpunished by an encounter with snakes, brought me only into a marsh as full of land-crabs as an ant-hill is of ants, and from which I had to retreat ingloriously, finding my way home at last by the beach.

I have had, as usual, a tribe of visitors and petitioners ever since I came home.  I will give you an account of those cases which had anything beyond the average of interest in their details.  One poor woman, named Molly, came to beg that I would, if possible, get an extension of their exemption from work after child-bearing.  The close of her argument was concise and forcible.  ’Missis, we hab um piccaninny—­tree weeks in de ospital, and den right out upon the hoe again—­can we strong dat way, missis?  No!’ And truly I do not see that they can.  This poor creature had had eight children and two miscarriages.  All her children were dead but one.  Another of my visitors was a divinely named but not otherwise divine Venus; it is a favourite name among these sable folk, but, of course, must have been given originally in derision.  The Aphrodite in question was a dirt-coloured (convenient colour I should say for these parts) mulatto.  I could not understand how she came on this property, for she was the daughter of a black woman and the overseer of an estate to which her mother formerly belonged, and from which I suppose she was sold, exchanged, or given, as the case may