Il8 MY STUDIO NEIGHBORS 



mountain-laurel welcomes the twilight moth with 

 an impulsive multiple embrace. The desmodium 

 and genesta celebrate their hospitality with a 

 joke, as it were, letting their threshold fall be- 

 neath the feet of the caller, and startling him with 

 an explosion and a cloud of yellow powder, sug- 

 gesting the day pyrotechnics of the Chinese. 

 The prickly-pear cactus encloses its buzzing vis- 

 itor in a golden bower, from which he must 

 emerge at the roof as dusty as a miller. The 

 barberry, in similar vein, lays mischievous hold 

 of the tongue of its sipping bee, and I fancy, in 

 his early acquaintance, before he has learned its 

 ways, gives him more of a welcome than he had 

 bargained for. The evening primrose, with out- 

 stretched filaments, hangs a golden necklace about 

 the welcome murmuring noctuid, while the vari- 

 ous orchids excel in the ingenuity of their saluta- 

 tions. Here is one which presents a pair of tiny 

 clubs to the sphinx-moth at its threshold, gluing 

 them to its bulging eyes. Another attaches simi- 

 lar tokens to the tongues of butterflies, while the 

 cypripedium speeds its parting guest with a stick- 

 ing-plaster smeared all over its back. And so 

 we might continue almost indefinitely. From the 

 stand-point of frivolous human etiquette we smile, 

 perhaps, at customs apparently so whimsical and 



