236 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
branch was to sink still deeper into the swamp- 
water, where its hind-legs would weaken and 
vanish as it touched dry land less and less. And 
here to-day we watched a quartette of these man- 
atees, living contented lives and breeding in the 
gardens of Georgetown. 
The mist again drifted its skeins around leaf 
and branch, gray things became grayer, drops 
formed in mid-air and slipped slowly through 
other slower forming drops, and a moment later 
rain was falling gently. We went away, and to 
our mind’s eye the manatees behind that gray 
curtain still munch bamboos, the spur-wings 
stretch their colorful wings cloudward, and the 
bubble-eyed crocodiles float intermittently be- 
tween two watery zones. 
To say that these are beautiful botanical gar< 
dens is like the statement that sunsets are admir- 
able events. It is better to think of them as a 
setting, focusing about the greatest water-lily in 
the world, or, as we have seen, the strangest 
mammal; or as an exhibit of roots—roots as va- 
ried and as exquisite as a hall of famous sculp- 
ture; or as a wilderness of tapestry foliage, in 
texture from cobweb to burlap; or as a heaven- 
roofed, sun-furnaced greenhouse of blossoms, 
