and drop it into the cyanide jar which
bulged from his pocket.

"I got a lot of those dog's-head fellows!" he called out to Shiela as
she came past with Hamil. "You remember that the white ants got at my
other specimens before I could mount them."

"I remember," said Shiela; "don't ride too hard in the sun, dear." But
Gray saw something ahead and shook out his bridle, and soon left them in
the rear once more, riding through endless glades of green where there
was no sound except the creak of leather and the continuous popping of
those small pods on the seeds of which quail feed.

"I thought there were no end of gorgeous flowers in the semi-tropics,"
he said, "but there's almost nothing here except green."

She laughed. "The concentration of bloom in Northern hothouses deceives
people. The semi-tropics and the tropics are almost monotonously green
except where cultivated gardens exist. There are no masses of flowers
anywhere; even the great brilliant blossoms make no show because they
are widely scattered. You notice them when you happen to come across
them in the woods, they are so brilliant and so rare."

"Are there no fruits--those delectable fruits one reads about?"

"There are bitter wild oranges, sour guavas, eatable beach-grapes and
papaws. If you're fond of wild cassava and can prepare it so it won't
poison you, you can make an eatable paste. If you like oily cabbage, the
top of any palmetto will furnish it. But, my poor friend, there's little
here to tempt one's appetite or satisfy one's aesthetic hunger for
flowers. Our Northern meadows are far more gorgeous from June to
October; and our wild fruits are far more delicious than what one finds
growing wild in the tropics."

"But bananas, cocoa-nuts, oranges--"

"All cultivated!"

"Persimmons, mulberries--"

"All cultivated when eatable. Everything palatable in this country is
cultivated."

He laughed dejectedly, then, again insistent: "But there _are_ plenty of
wild flowering trees!--magnolia, poinciana, china-berry--"

"All set out by mere man," she smiled--"except the magnolias and
dog-wood. No, Mr. Hamil, the riotous tropical bloom one reads about is
confined to people's gardens. When you come upon jasmine or an orchid in
the woods you notice the colour at once in the green monotony. But think
how many acres of blue and white and gold one passes in the North with
scarcely a glance! The South is beautiful too, in its way; but it is not
that way.