IN THE MEXICAN JUNGLE.

The jungle, however, rang with life. Brilliant birds flew, screaming
at their approach--noisy parrots and macaws; the _gaucamaya_, one
flush of red and gold; a king vulture, raven black save for his
scarlet crest. From the safe height of a saber, monkeys showered
vituperations upon them. Once an _iguana_, great chameleon
lizard, rose under foot and dashed for the nearest water; again a
python wound its slow length across the path. Vegetation was equally
gorgeous, always strange. He saw plants that stung more bitterly than
insects; insects barely distinguishable from plants. Here a tree bore
flowers instead of leaves; there flowers grew as large as trees. * * *
Birds, beasts, flowers--all were strange, all were wonderful.

HERMAN WHITAKER,
in _The Planter._

JULY 26.

Sitting in the white-paved pergola at Montecito. with overhead a leafy
shelter of pink-flowered passifloras, looking out over the little
lake, its surface dotted with water-lilies, its banks fringed with
drooping shrubs and vines, the hum of the bee and the bird in the
air--I looked down over a wonderful collection of nearly 200 rare
palms and listened to the music that floated up from their waving
branches like that of a thousand silken-stringed eolian harp; and
there came into my mind visions of a people that shall be strong with
the strength of great hills, calm with the calm of a fair sea, united
as are at last the palm and the pine, mighty with the presence of God.

BELLE SUMNER ANGIER,
in _The Garden Book of California._

JULY 27.

THE GIANT SEQUOIAS.

O lofty giants of the elder prime!
How may the feeble lips, of mortal, rhyme
A measure fitted to thy statures grand,
As like a gathering of gods ye stand
And raise your solemn arms up to the skies,
While through your leaves pour Ocean's symphonies!
What Druid lore ye know! What ancient rites--
Gray guardians of ten thousand days and nights,
Watching the stars swim round their sapphire pole,
The ocean surges break about earth's brimming bowl.
The cyclone's driving swirl, the storm-tossed seas.
Hymning for aye their myriad litanies!

* * * * *

What dawn of Life saw ye, Grand Prophets old?
What pristine years? What advents manifold?
When first the glaciers in their icy throes
Were grinding thy repasts; and feeding thee with snows?
What earthquake shocks? What changes of the sun?