OS ISLES OP SFMMEE. 



branch, having its own marked and Avidely dissimilar charac- 

 teristics and qualities, fasten to the same common rock and 

 eliminate and perfect their juices out of the same scanty and 

 most unpromising materials. So also with the flowering shrubs 

 and vines, — a world of itself, teeming with blooms in unending, 

 variety, radiant with every shade of color, and redolent with 

 unnumbered perfumes of marvelous sweetness, — upon the outer 

 margins of which we stand appalled, and lay down our descrip- 

 tive pen, conscious that we cannot do it justice. 



How such wondrous growths are rendered jjossible upon islands 

 so destitute of the rich fertilizing elements which are deemed 

 necessary for the proper development of vegetable life at the 

 North, it is difficult to understand or conceive, and we are com- 

 pelled to fall back upon that Divine fiat, whose faint murmurs, 

 recorded in Genesis, come to us through the dim shadows of a 

 past that shroud the mysterious beginnings of time. 



