292 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
clad Fayalese, and I sometimes went into cot- 
tages and found the children lying in bed to 
keep warm. Yet roses, geraniums, and callas 
bloomed out of doors all the time, and great 
trees of red camellia, which they cut as we cut 
roses. Superb scarlet banana flowers decked 
our Christmas-tree. Deciduous trees lose their 
leaves in winter there, however, and exotic 
plants retain the habits they brought with 
them, with one singular exception. The Morus 
multicaulis was imported, and the silk manufac- 
ture with it. Suddenly the trees seemed to grow 
bewildered ; they put forth earlier and earlier in 
the spring, until they got back to January; the 
leaves at last fell so early that the worms died 
before spinning cocoons, and the whole enter- 
prise was in a few years abandoned because of 
this vegetable insanity. 
In spite of the absence of snow and presence 
of verdure, this falling of the leaves gives some 
hint of winter ; yet blackbirds and canaries sing 
without ceasing. The latter are a variety pos- 
sessing rather inferior charms, compared with 
the domestic species; but they have a pretty 
habit of flying away to Pico every night. It 
was pleasant to sit at sunset on the high cliffs 
at the end of the island and watch the little 
brown creatures, like fragments of the rock 
itself, whirled away over the foaming ocean. 
