STRANGE CREATIONS 171 



hand and the transparent purple one sees in the 

 Bougainvillea creeper on the other. A beautiful 

 stately growth is the Spathodea, which also at this 

 season of the year clothes itself in a brief glory of 

 deep red flowers, sheltering beneath it to some 

 extent a massive rock-like growth of Candelabra 

 euphorbia. This grotesque, I will not say unlovely 

 plant, possesses no leaves whatsoever ; but in some 

 faint degree suggests a quaint form of cactus, since 

 from one common trunk or stem a multitude of 

 vertical branches rise into the air to a height of 20 

 or 80 feet, something like the branches of an old- 

 fashioned candelabrum. It is said with I know 

 not how much truth that the white milky juice 

 produces blindness on touching the eye. A little 

 beyond, your attention is caught by a Dracaena, 

 another of Nature's bizarreries. The branches of 

 this remarkable plant, which also rises to a height 

 of some 30 feet, descend downward, and then 

 upward again, forming a sort of huge pothook. 

 From the extreme end of this pothook a tuft of 

 long narrow leaves sprouts, surrounding a short- 

 lived white flower. I was often tormented by my 

 inability to recollect what these tufted extremities 

 reminded me of, until one day a small boy, who 

 had not been in the hands of the barber for some 

 time, came into the room of a house in which I 

 was staying. Then 1 saw in the obstinate little 

 bunch of mutinous hairs at the end of where his 

 parting ought to have been the best simile for the 

 extremity of a Dracasna's branch I could possibly 

 have been furnished with. 



Another humorous creation is the Kigelia (I 



