It is curious how enthusiastic California has been in its reception of the eucalyptus globulus, the blue-gum tree of Australia. And I am afraid there has been some job put upon the San Franciscans in this matter. Has anybody, with a little speculation in blue-gums on hand, been telling them that the eucalyptus was a wonderful drainer of marshes and conqueror of fevers? If so, it is a pity they had not heard that that hoax was quite played out in Europe, and the eucalyptus shown to be an impostor. Or were they told of its stately proportions, its rapid growth, its beautiful foliage, and its splendid shade? If so, that hoax will soon expose itself. Given a site where no wind blows, the eucalyptus will grow straight, but offered the smallest provocation it flops off to one side or the other, while its foliage is liable probably beyond that of all other trees to discoloration and raggedness. In Natal it has proved itself very useful as fencing, for neither wood nor stone being procurable, slips and shreds of eucalyptus have soon grown up into permanent hedges. But no one thinks of valuing it anywhere, except in Australia, either for its timber, its appearance, or its medicinal virtues. In many ways the Queen of the Pacific was a surprise; I had expected to find it "semi-tropical." It is nothing of the kind. Women were wearing furs every afternoon (in June) because of the chill wind that springs up about three o'clock, and men walked about with great-coats over their arms ready for use. The architecture of the city is not so "semi-tropical" as that of suburban New York, while vegetation, instead of being rampant, is conspicuously absent. Three women out of every four wore very thick veils, but why they were so thick I could not discover. In hot countries they do not wear them, nor in "semi-tropical." Perhaps they were vestiges of some recent visitation of dust, which appears to be sometimes as prodigious here as it is in Pietermaritzburg. But they might, very properly, have been an armour against the flies which swarmed in some parts of the town in hideous multitudes. I went into a large restaurant, the "Palace" something it was called, with the intention of eating, but I left without doing so, a palled by the plague of flies. I found Beelzebub very powerful in Washington, and at some of "the eating places" in the South his hosts were intolerable; but San Francisco has streets as completely given over to the fly-fiend as an Alexandrian bazaar.