u alone canst find her.
Her hair so soft, so silken soft thy breezes blow
And thou shall laugh with her, give her thy first sweet kiss.
On her white blossom's snow ...
Why, why, dost thou not fly, on clouds of love.
'Tis thou alone canst find her.
Thou fain would'st ask doth she love thee.
Thou knowest well
She loves thee,
April Dear.

ADRIADNE HOLMES EDWARDS.

AUGUST 13.

Our pitcher-plant is one of the most wonderful and interesting of all
the forms that grow, linking, as it were, the vegetable world with the
animal, by its unnatural carnivorous habits.

No ogre in his castle has ever gone to work more deliberately or
fiendishly to entrap his victims while offering them hospitality, than
does this plant-ogre. Attracted by the bizarre yellowish hoods of the
tall, nodding flowers, the foolish insect alights upon the former and
commences his exploration of the fascinating region.

But at last, when he has partaken to satiety and would fain depart, he
turns to retrace his steps. In the dazzlement of the transparent
windows of the dome above, he loses sight of the darkened door in the
floor by which he entered and flies forcibly upward, bumping his head
in his eagerness to escape. He is stunned by the blow and plunges
downward into the tube below. Here he struggles to rise, but countless
downward-pointing, bristly hairs urge him to his fate.

MARY ELIZABETH PARSONS,
in _The Wild Flowers of California._

AUGUST 14.

Sausalito is noted for its abundance of flowers. These not only grow
in thick profusion in the quaint hillside gardens, but are planted
beside the roadways, covering many an erstwhile bare and unsightly
bank with trailing vines, gay nasturtiums and bright geraniums. There
is something in the spirit of this hillside gardening, this planting
of sweet blossoms for the public at large, that is very appealing.

HELEN BINGHAM,
in _In Tamal Land._

AUGUST 15.

A GROUP OF CACTI.
(IN CALIFORNIA.)

Flower of the desert, type mysterious, strange,
Like bird or monster on some sculptured tomb
In Egypt's curious fashion wrought, what change
Or odd similitude of fate, what range
Of cycling centuries from out the gloom
Of dusty ages has evolved thy bloom?
In the bleak desert of an alien zone,
Child of the past, why dwellest thou alone?
Grotesque, incongruous, amid the flowers;
Unlovely and unloved, standing aside,
Like to some rugged spirit