uins millions of
years more ancient--the fossil bones of great creatures as strange as
any that live in the realm of fairyland or fiction. Among them was
revealed the ancestry of elephants, which was also that of manatees.
Far back in geological times the tapir-like Moeritherium, which
wandered through Eocene swamps, had within itself the prophecy of two
diverse lines. One would gain great tusks and a long, mobile trunk and
live its life in distant tropical jungles; and another branch was to
sink still deeper into the swamp-water, where its hind-legs would
weaken and vanish as it touched dry land less and less. And here
to-day we watched a quartette of these manatees, living contented
lives and breeding in the gardens of Georgetown.

The mist again drifted its skeins around leaf and branch, gray things
became grayer, drops formed in mid-air and slipped slowly through
other slower forming drops, and a moment later rain was falling
gently. We went away, and to our mind's eye the manatees behind that
gray curtain still munch bamboos, the spur-wings stretch their
colorful wings cloudward, and the bubble-eyed crocodiles float
intermittently between two watery zones.

To say that these are beautiful botanical gardens is like the
statement that sunsets are admirable events. It is better to think of
them as a setting, focusing about the greatest water-lily in the
world, or, as we have seen, the strangest mammal; or as an exhibit of
roots--roots as varied and as exquisite as a hall of famous sculpture;
or as a wilderness of tapestry foliage, in texture from cobweb to
burlap; or as a heaven-roofed, sun-furnaced greenhouse of blossoms,
from the tiniest of dull-green orchids to the fifty-foot spike of
taliput bloom. With this foundation of vegetation recall that the
Demerara coast is a paradise for herons, egrets, bitterns, gallinules,
jacanas, and hawks, and think of these trees and foliage, islands and
marsh, as a nesting and roosting focus for hundreds of such birds.
Thus, considering the gardens indirectly, one comes gradually to the
realization of their wonderful character.

The Victoria Regia has one thing in common with a volcano--no amount
of description or of colored plates prepares one for the plant itself.
In analysis we recall its dimensions, colors, and form. Standing by a
trench filled with its leaves and flowers, we discard the records of
memory, and cleansing the senses of pre-impressions, begin anew. The
marvel