232 LODGES IN THE WILDERNESS 



well over its borders, and the latent life of the 

 waste had leaped, responsive, to the surface. 

 Now a whole flora that had slept for years in 

 tubers and dry stalks sent forth blossoms in 

 million-fold rivalry to attract the replete, 

 drowsy insects. 



Here, from a dense, thorny, involuted mass 

 of gnarled, shapeless stems that must have 

 been many centuries old, arose the delicate, 

 fairy-like petals of a scented pelargonium. 

 The corolla was snow-white, except for a 

 minute, sagittate marking of bright cerise on 

 the lower lip. If you had examined ten thou- 

 sand of these flowers you would not have 

 found one in which that little mark varied to 

 the extent of the ten-thousandth part of an 

 inch. The thought of which that blossom was 

 the manifestation the afterthought of which 

 the tiny cerise arrowhead was the expression 

 dwelt down in the unlovely labyrinth of the 

 monstrous stems, and had been adhered to 

 with steady persistence through successions of 

 long arid-year periods. It was whispered to 

 the silk-winged seed from which that hoary 

 patriarch had birth, perhaps when Alaric was 

 thundering at the gates of Rome. And it 

 would be as unerringly transmitted to 

 blossoms making sweet the breeze in days 



