VEGETABLE VAGARIES. 283 
permit of a brief record of Australian potentialities for the entertainment of distinguished 
immigrants from other climes. The dry atmosphere, wealth of sunshine, and congenial 
temperature predominating in the extra-tropical metropolitan centres has proved to be 
singularly adapted to the acclimatisation, among other exotic plants, of many of the most 
handsome representatives of the genus Cereus, belonging to the tropical American Cactus 
tribe. A few excerpts from a considerable number of photographs taken by the writer, 
reproduced in these pages, will suffice to establish the correctness of this assertion. 
The Cacti of the genus Cereus are notable for the circumstances that their handsome 
blossoms are, in the majority of instances, purely white, varied perhaps by tinges of 
delicate pink or sulphur yellow, and, more. especially, that they only condescend 
to display their floral charms in the night season, closing their petals and hastening 
to decay with the rising sun. To see these plants,-and, above all, to photograph 
them in their glory, one must therefore—unless employing magnesium light, which 
would be scarcely practical in the case of several of the larger examples here 
illustrated—be an early riser. The witching hour to secure a favourable “ sitting ” 
is at daybreak, just before the sun appears above the horizon, when with a 
prolonged exposure there is sufficient actinic illumination to impress the plate. 
The finest collection of Cerei or other Cacti growing upon Australian territory is 
undoubtedly that contained in the Adelaide Botanical Gardens. The examples 
selected for the border illustrations of pages 284 and 285 were derived from this source. 
The Mexican species Cereus chalybeus, represented on the side of page 285, formed, 
as may be recognised by its comparison with the rail-fence close beside it, a sheaf 
of polygonal flower-bearing columns over thirty feet high. A couple of flowers of 
the same type, taken from a nearer standpoint, are portrayed on the opposite 
side border. The outer petals in ‘this species were slightly tinged with pink. The 
two basement border illustrations to the same pages represent another form, Cereus 
nitens, that was established close beside the tall columnar species, but differed 
in its growth habits to the extent of forming procumbent straggling masses, 
whose highest stalks were elevated to no greater heights than from one to two 
feet above the surface of the ground. The expanded blossoms in this variety are 
of a translucent snowy whiteness about six inches in diameter, and, as seen in clusters 
of eight or nine individuals, presented-a most fascinating spectacle. 
The most strikingly remarkable example of Cactus blooms here portrayed is 
undoubtedly that of Cereus grandiflorus, represented on page 286. The expanded 
goblet-shaped flowers of this superb species measure as much as nine inches or, with 
