m and matchless blending of their
warm, ripe colors.

The next day we dined at Dr. Almeida's, and in his magnificent garden
found several choice specimens of both the _Victoria regia_ and the
_Rafflesia Arnoldi_, the two largest flowers in the world, each bloom
measuring two feet in diameter. But the rarest of all the doctor's
treasures was the night-blooming cereus. There were six blooms in full
maturity--four on one stalk and two on another--creamy, waxen flowers
of exquisite form, the leaves of the corolla of a pale golden hue
and the petals intensely white. The calyx rises from a long, hollow
footstalk, which is formed of rough plates overlapping each other like
tiles on a roof. From the centre of this footstalk rises a bundle of
filaments that encircle the style, stamens springing also from the
insertion of the leaves of the corolla, lining it with delicate beauty
and waving their slender forms with exquisite grace. But the
real charm of the cereus is its wondrous perfume, exhaled just at
night-fall, and readily discernible over the circuit of a mile. The
peculiar odor cannot be understood by mere description, but partakes
largely of that of sweet lilies, violets, the tuberose and vanilla.
After the bud appears the growth is very rapid, often two or three
inches a day--that is, in the height of the stalk, the flower
expanding proportionately. When fully grown it begins to unfold
its charms as the twilight deepens into night, and reaches perfect
maturity about an hour before midnight: at three o'clock its glory is
already beginning to wane, though scarcely perceptibly; but at dawn
it is fading rapidly, and by sun-rise only a wilted, worthless wreck
remains, good for nothing but to be "cast out and trodden under foot
of men."

FANNIE R. FEUDGE.

A PRINCESS OF THULE.

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON."

CHAPTER XII.

TRANSFORMATION.

Had Sheila, then, Lavender could not help asking himself, a bad
temper, or any other qualities or characteristics which were apparent
to other people, but not to him? Was it possible that, after all,
Ingram was right, and that he had yet to learn the nature of the girl
he had married? It would be unfair to say that he suspected something
wrong about his wife--that he fancied she had managed to conceal
something--merely because Mrs. Lavender had said that Sheila had a bad
temper; but here was another person who maintained that when the da