act of climbing the
tree, but before I could move hand or foot two things happened, whether
you take my word for them or no.

Firstly, up through a glade in the underwood, attracted by the odour,
came an ugly brown bird with a capacious beak and shining claws. He
perched near by, and peeped and peered until he made out the flower
pining on her virgin stem, whereat off he hopped to her branch and
there, with a cynical chuckle, strutted to and fro between her and the
main stem like an ill genius guarding a fairy princess.

Surely Heaven would not allow him to tamper with so chaste a bud! My
hand reached for a stone to throw at him when happened the second
thing. There came a gentle pat upon the woodland floor, and from a
tree overhead dropped down another living plant like to the one above
yet not exactly similar, a male, my instincts told me, in full solitary
blossom like her above, cinctured with leaves, and supported by half a
score of thick white roots that worked, as I looked, like the limbs of
a crab. In a twinkling that parti-coloured gentleman vegetable near me
was off to the stem upon which grew his lady love; running and
scrambling, dragging the finery of his tasselled petals behind, it was
laughable to watch his eagerness. He got a grip of the tree and up he
went, "hand over hand," root over root. I had just time to note others
of his species had dropped here and there upon the ground, and were
hurrying with frantic haste to the same destination when he reached the
fatal branch, and was straddling victoriously down it, blind to all but
love and longing. That ill-omened bird who stood above the
maiden-flower let him come within a stalk's length, so near that the
white splendour of his sleeping lady gleamed within arms' reach, then
the great beak was opened, the great claws made a clutch, the gallant's
head was yanked from his neck, and as it went tumbling down the maw of
the feathered thing his white legs fell spinning through space, and lay
knotting themselves in agony upon the ground for a minute or two before
they relaxed and became flaccid in the repose of death. Another and
another vegetable suitor made for that fatal tryst, and as each came up
the snap of the brown bird's beak was all their obsequies. At last no
more came, and then that Nemesis of claws and quills walked over to the
girl-flower, his stomach feathers ruffled with repletion, the green
blood of her lovers dripping from his claws, and