THE GARDEN OF THE DESERT 233 



when men will hold this generation to be as 

 remote as we hold the dwellers of the Solutre 

 Cavern. 



There swayed a slender heliophila the 

 modest sunlover who, in the course of age- 

 long, patient vigils, had drawn down and en- 

 snared the hue of the desert sky in her petals. 

 Far and near the plain was starred with 

 beauty. The small, inornate, thirst-land 

 butterflies had ventured out from the hills; 

 they flitted to and fro, lazy and listless. They 

 sported with Amaryllis in the sunshine and 

 then tried to flirt shamelessly with Iris, the shy 

 maiden on the nodding, hair-like stem who 

 veiled her visage in sober brown by day, but 

 revealed it, white and eager to the stars whilst 

 she made the wings of the night-wind faint 

 with perfume. 



An oval shrub attracted one's attention not 

 through its beauty, but because it was an 

 object startling and bizarre. It looked as 

 though covered with rags of various tints. 

 This was that criminal among vegetables the 

 Roridula. A close inspection almost filled one 

 with horror; the plant was like a shambles. 

 The leaves resembled toothed traps; in most 

 of them insects were tightly gripped. After 

 these had been sucked dry, drained of blood 



