AUGUST 179 



winds, which search every cranny in the rocks and 

 have to be built out with cycloprean walls and 

 warded off with belts of tough, stunted trees, the 

 vegetation would beguile a man into the belief that 

 he was in Corfu or Madeira. Mesembryanthemums, 

 the despair of inland gardeners, cover the rocks and 

 rough walls with a mantle of crimson and gold ; 

 crassula, geranium, pelargonium, and other tender 

 things associated with bedding out, here make peren- 

 nial undergrowth for enormous aloes, bonapartia, 

 prickly pear, cordyline, and various sub -tropical 

 growths. Where shade and shelter can be had, tree 

 ferns of several species grow magnificently. It would 

 take many pages and involve the use of many poly- 

 syllables to describe a fourth of the exotics for which 

 Mr. Dorrien Smith provides a congenial home. Men- 

 tion, however, must be made of two of the loftier 

 flowering things which luxuriate here, for nowhere else 

 shall you see them in such magnificence. The first 

 is the true Metrosideros coccinea ; not the Callistemon 

 or crimson bottle-brush which nurserymen usually 

 supply under that name, but the real thing, distin- 

 guished from Callistemon by its epidendric tendencies 

 and its terminal scarlet tassels. Callistemon bears 

 carmine bottle-brushes, a splendid thing too, and quite 

 hardy in Scilly. Indeed it only asks for a mat in 

 winter to enable it to withstand any west country winter. 

 The flower of Metrosideros was past at the time of 

 my visit, but enough traces remained to show what 

 these trees must have been in their glory. The other 

 tree referred to, Cletkra arborea, was in full flower. It 



