rew. _Hedges of
geranium seven feet high_! Think of that, ye _Dicksons_ and
nursery-ground men about _Brompton_ and the _King's Road_! The stalks a
mass of real ligneous matter, fit for the turner's lathe if it were but
hard enough. A small mound enables us to look about us more at large;
and now we discern the stately _bamboo_, thicker than your arm, and tall
as a small mast; and the _sugar-cane_, formerly cultivated for his
juice, but now looking as if he were ill-used and neglected. His
biography (but as it is not _auto_-biography, and written with his own
_reed_, there may be some mistake) is remarkable. Soon after the
annexation of Sicily to Spain in 1420, he was carried from Syracuse into
Spanish captivity; he then escaped to Madeira and the Canaries, and at
length saved himself in the West Indies. The _pistachia_ is also here,
with its five-partite sessile leaf, like a dwarf walnut; the capsule
holding the nut containing at present only a white germ, which it will
require four months more to bring to nutty maturity. The _manna_-tree is
very like an _alder_ in its general character, but thicker in its stem,
and bears the cicatrices of last year's _ill treatment_; its wounds,
however, will not bleed afresh now; but towards August the _salassatore_
of trees will run his steel into its limbs, taking care to place under
the bleeding orifices leaves from the _cactus_ hedge hard by to serve as
recipients, and drain its juices till it faints.

That a _leaf_ might not be _wanting_ to record these vegetable
treasures, the pagoda-topped _papyrus_ nodded to us gracefully, and
offered its services; while, to finish the picture, Angola goats are
browsing amid the green and yellow ribbed _agaves_; and the beautiful
blue sea peeps in through gaps of the wall of _cactus_, whose green
stems are now all fringed with yellow blossoms. Leaving the flower
garden, we enter a labyrinth, and arrive at a small hut, with a closed
door, upon the threshold of which we have scarcely pressed, when the
wicket flies open, and a big brown friar, with long beard and sandals,
starts up in act to frighten us, which he succeeds in doing. This
automaton _Schedoni_ might really well produce abortion, and would not
care if he did: he cannot, we suppose, be placed there as a lawful
instrument of relief, for all the _donzelle_ of Palermo must be _aware_
of, and be used to him. This, however, is thought so good a joke, that
it is repeated with variations; f