A Sojourn in Cuba 
ment, before the oncoming of another wave, 
“surely you cannot be living here! You must 
have been blown from some warm bank, and 
rolled into this little hollow crack like a dead 
shell.” But, running back after every retiring 
wave, I found that its roots were wedged into 
a shallow wrinkle of the coral rock, and that 
this wave-beaten chink was indeed its dwelling- 
place. 
I had oftentimes admired the adaptation dis- 
played in the structure of the stately dulse and 
other seaweeds, but never thought to find a 
highbred flowering plant dwelling amid waves 
in the stormy, roaring domain of the sea. This 
little plant has smooth globular leaves, fleshy 
and translucent like beads, but green like those 
of other land plants. The flower is about five 
eighths of an inch in diameter, rose-purple, 
opening in calm weather, when deserted by the 
waves. In general appearance it is like a small 
portulaca. The strand, as far as I walked it, 
was luxuriantly fringed with woody Composite? > 
two or three feet in height, their tops purple 
1 163 1 
