uncanny thing. The Carls Ruhe Scientific Journal some time 

 ago gave a fine description of this wonder and its shrieking wor- 

 shipers. At certain times in the year large meetings are held, 

 where wild incantations and weird dances take place. Finally, 

 when the excitement is at its height, one woman, whose fervor 

 surpasses that of the other worshipers, approaches nearer the 

 tree, drawn irresistibly on by her fanatical zeal until she steps on 

 the leaves, in order to drink of the sweet liquid that lies at its base 

 in a sort of inverted plate. Then the inert mass of leaves that 

 stretches from the base to nearly the top of the tree, and which 

 is two to three feet thick, the lower part of each leaf being three 

 feet wide and filled with stiff hooks, suddenly warms to life, and 

 as the unfortunate victim sinks into a delicious sleep she is 

 grasped in the clutches of these cruel hooked leaves. The slender 

 palpi droop and fold about her. The larger leaves acting more 

 slowly, but none the less surely, steadily bind and press until the 

 victim is completely obliterated." This is fairly like what the 

 sundew might appear to a mosquito or small fly, but as for a 

 plant large enough to eat human beings, we may add with the 

 Companion, "There is no tree in the world so peculiar or hor- 

 rible!" 



Largest Flower of the Pea Family. — The Bulletin of 

 the Botanical Department of Jamaica, records the flowering there, 

 in April, of that member of the pea family which bears the largest 

 flowers of any of its tribe. The plant — Camvcnsia maxima — is 

 a native of Africa, and when discovered by the botanist, Wel- 

 witsch, bore flowers a foot long. One may gain some slight 

 idea of the appearance of single blossoms by imagining a sweet 

 pea or locust blossom increased to the size of a large cabbage. 

 At Hope Gardens, Jamaica, the vine is growing over a calabash 

 tree on the lawn. It produced two racemes of flowers, one with 

 thirteen, and the other with eight blooms. The flowers meas- 

 ured ten and one-half inches from the base of the sepals to the 

 tip of the standard, the latter being nine inches high and four and 

 one-half inches broad. The petals are pure white, with edges 



