ABBOTT KINNEY,
in Tasks By Twilight.

The leaves of the wild gourd, lying in great star shaped patches on the ground, drooped on their stems, and the spikes of dusty white sage by the road hung limp at the ends, and filled the air with their wilted fragrance.  The sea-breeze did not come up, and in its stead gusts of hot wind from the north swept through the valley as if from the door of a furnace.

MARGARET COLLIER GRAHAM,
in Stories of the Foothills.

AUGUST 12.

ENTICEMENT.

  Then haste, sweet April Dear. 
  Thou 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.)