This comes home to me with especial force, in attempting to do Miss Bird’s behest of collecting ferns for her. In any case the pursuit is to me a novel one, for I have always steadily set my face against all manner of dried plants, and vowed nothing would ever induce me to have anything to do with such. But in obedience to her command, I started the largest portfolio in all Fiji, to enable me to preserve at least small sections of the splendid giants which form the glory of these isles (but which to my utterly ignorant eye appear identical with those of Australia and New Zealand). But after all, what can the biggest portfolio do when you have to deal with fronds eight or ten feet long by four or five feet wide? You can only preserve a fragment, which gives you no notion of the lovely original. This is especially true of what I call the umbrella-fern, one frond of which will quite cover a sleeping man lying down full length. However, I did what I could—lugged about this horrid great portfolio everywhere, full of blotting-paper and drying-paper, and most conscientiously preserved all the loveliest things I could get, I never knew before how long you have to search among the ferns (which as a whole look so beautiful) before you can get one quite perfect, especially one in seed. And I invariably found such when we were on some difficult scramble, with enough to do to get along with hands and feet; or else when we were hurrying on to catch a tide, with the prospect of a long row in either the canoe or a tiny boat, under a grilling sun; and generally, on reaching our destination, found the great portfolio and other superfluities all gone on board the ship, ready for the morrow’s start. Even when it was there all right, and the last hour of daylight devoted to the attempt to save the half-withered treasures of the day, there was invariably the mortification of finding those of the previous days covered with mildew—often the small fronds fairly dropping off. And now that I have got back again, and look at the result, I find nothing but page after page of smelly mould, with shrunken brown corpses of bits of what were once ferns. I only got half-a-dozen sketches on this trip, and they are all mildewed. The scenery, however, is lovely. I had hoped to have found some ferns collected for me here by one or two people whom I had asked to help me, and who had agreed to do so. The majority whom I asked at once refused point-blank; others said, “I go, sir,” and went not. All jeered at me, and congratulated me on my undertaking; some said “they had tried it once.” All agreed that the only chance of success is to change all the papers at least every other day—a pleasant prospect truly! However, the upshot is that no one has as yet brought me one fern; and those I collected with so much care are just a mass of mildew, the very smell of which is sickening. So you must tell Miss Bird, that though for love of her I will stick to the attempt, all I have done so far is