230 ARAUCARINE 
very bark at the butt looked like healing over and 
starting afresh upon a new lease of life, and, be it 
truthfully admitted, to the consternation of all who 
had planned the downfall, and brought about its 
extinction from a scene that it failed, in their ideas 
of true beauty, to harmonize with. The complexity: 
of emotions that surged round that poor old prostrate 
Chilian trunk recalls the story of the meribund 
patient carried into hospital. When the faculty 
made pronouncement of his death he began to show 
signs of revival, whereupon his wife peremptorily 
bade him lie still, since the doctors, she said, must 
know best what was the matter with him. 
It has been my lot to see some well-sized. butt-length 
boards, shown at Forestry Exhibitions of the Royal 
Agricultural and Shropshire and West Midland Shows. 
The consensus of opinion among the timber-dealing 
fraternity and the cognoscenti of wood-structure value, 
was decidedly in the wood’s favour. It exceeded their 
expectations, but, as timber is not readily disposed 
of to timber merchants unless it be in quantities, 
further experience of it upon those rare occasions when 
it finds its way. into a timber-yard, must be confined 
for the present to estate work by private owners. 
We need not waste any words upon the subject 
of its identification. It was told to St. Paul, in a 
forcible way, that it is hard to kick against the pricks. 
Any experiments upon these lines would establish 
the fact and truth of its prickly nature, and the 
undesirability of attempts to entrust any parts of 
your person to contact or competition with its foliage. 
There is no use blinking the fact that our now old 
homespun friend, the Puzzle Monkey, is . beginning 
to attain an unenviable fame of unpopularity with us. 
We are not holding in any way a brief on its behalf, 
but there are one or two little scraps and tittles of 
evidence in the direction of extenuating circum- 
