letter ix.] REDUNDANT VEGETATION. 



83 



" satisfied with seeing." It was a dream, a rapture, this maze 

 of form and colour, this entangled luxuriance, this bewildering 

 beauty, through which we caught glimpses of a heavenly sky 

 above, while far away, below glade and lawn, shimmered in 

 surpassing loveliness the cool blue of the Pacific. To me, with 

 my hatred of reptiles and insects, it is not the least among the 

 charms of Hawaii, that these glorious entanglements, and cool, 

 damp depths of a redundant vegetation give shelter to nothing 

 of unseemly shape and venomous proboscis or fang. Here, in 

 cool, dreamy, sunny Onomea, there are no horrid, drumming, 

 stabbing, mosquitos as at Honolulu, to remind me of what I 

 forget sometimes, that I am not in Eden. 



I. L. B. 



Note. — Throughout these letters the botanical names given are only 

 those which are current on the Islands. Those specimens of ferns which 

 survived the rough usage which befell them, are to be seen in the Her- 

 barium of the Botanical Garden at Oxford, and have been arranged by my 

 cousin, Professor Lawson. 



G 2 



