98 > ISLES OF SUMMER. 
branch, having its own marked and widely dissimilar charac- 
teristics and qualities, fasten to the same common rock and 
eliminate and perfect their juices out of the same scanty and 
most unpromising materials. So also with the flowering shrubs 
and vines,—a world of itself, teeming with blooms in unending 
variety, radiant with every shade of color, and redolent with 
unnumbered perfumes of marvelous sweetness,—upon the outer 
margins of which we stand appalled, and lay down our descrip-. 
tive pen, conscious that we cannot do it justice. 
- How such wondrous growths are rendered possible upon islands 
so destitute of the rich fertilizing elements which are deemed. 
necessary for the proper development of vegetable life at the 
North, it is difficult to understand or conceive, and we are com- 
pelled to fall back upon that Divine fiat, whose faint murmurs, 
recorded in Genesis, come to us through the dim shadows of & 
peat that shroud the mysterious beginnings of time. 
