172 KEW GARDENS 



parasite tamarind, the gaunt and desolate guava. The 

 cactus no longer struggles for existence in the feeble sun- 

 shine of a three -pair back window with a southern 

 exposure, but, swollen to the size of a scrub oak, impedes 

 your way with its dull, hideous, prickly leaves, and flaunts 

 its great flowers in your face. You may cure your thirst 

 by day with the sweet clear waters of the cocoa-nut. You 

 may cool your heated eyes by night with such floods of 

 golden moonlight as would have driven Shelley mad. 

 The moon, which gives expression to the most tedious 

 landscape and the most unmeaning face, and converts the 

 delight of gazing upon beauty into a kind of frenzy, the 

 moon makes all men Endymions in Cuba. 



But if, amid hints and samples of such 

 luxuriance, the well-clad visitor feels his spirit 

 " falter in the mist " and be inclined to " languish 

 for the purple seas " of the South, let him consider 

 how with a certain relief he escapes from the 

 damp, dripping, sticky heat of these glass-houses 

 into our untempered breezes, a little exercise 

 soon setting his blood in tune with a climate 

 that from the cradle goads one to be always 

 doing something, if only throwing stones, that 

 here would be a most objectionable pastime for 

 our versatile youth. It is the sons of a 

 temperate zone who are stirred into building 

 palm houses or setting out to hunt for treasures 

 of the tropics, when tired of hunting in play 



