And now I say to my readers, one and all,--you may not have the opportunity to examine the glorious tropical Orchids, or the gorgeous Flamboyant, but go and pluck a flower of the London-pride, and you will have before your eyes such a production of Divine handiwork as may well excite the admiration and adoration of an angel. [203] Rev. v. 11. [204] Edwards's _Voyage up the Amazon_, 194. [205] _Travels on the Amazon and Negro_, 222. [206] _Voy. à la Nouv. Guinée._ [207] _Amer. Ornith._ [208] Edwards's _Voy. up the Amazon_, 143. [209] _Martial_, xiii. 72. [210] _Windsor Forest._ [211] See _Good Words_ for April 1861. [212] _Wordsworth_. [213] _Wanderings in N. S. Wales_, &c., ii. 43. [214] _Zool._, 3060. [215] Low's _Sarawak_, 87. [216] Tennent's _Ceylon_, i. 250. [217] Ellis's _Visit to Madagascar_, 313. [218] _Nat. Voyage_, ch. xviii. [219] Pöppig.--_Nov. Gen. et Sp._, i. 54. [220] Lindley's _Sertum Orchid._; pi. xxvi. [221] _Himal. Journ._, ii. 58. [222] _Himal. Journals_, i. 126. [223] Low's _Sarawak_, 65. [224] The writer by this term doubtless alludes to the panicles or heads _compounded_ of many individual flowers; for the plant does not belong to the order _Compositæ_, but to _Byttneriaceæ_. [225] Ellis's _Madagascar_, p. 390. [226] Ellis's _Visits to Madagascar_, 57. [227] Atkinson's _Siberia_, 472. XI. PARASITES. Vast as is this round world on which we live, its surface is not nearly large enough for all the living creatures which are ordained to inhabit it. Multitudes of animals do not walk on the ground, or swim in the waters, or fly in the air, but find the scene of their abode on or in the bodies of other animals. Multitudes of plants do not grow out of the soil, but attach themselves to other plants, and draw their sustenance and support thence. Nay, there are parasites upon parasites, and this, according to Hood, in an infinitely descending series. "Great fleas have little fleas Upon their backs to bite 'em; And little fleas have lesser fleas; And so _ad infinitum_." Perhaps the poet's imagination ran a little ahead of his science here; but the idea of an _infinite_ succession of parasites, like nests of pill-boxes, is surely a funny one. There is nothing funny, however, in the thought "that even man," who was made in the image of God, "bears about in his vital organs various forms of loathsome creatures, which riot on his fluids, and consume the very substance of his tissues while ensconced where no efforts of his can dislodge them, no application destroy them. So it is; and few physical facts are better calculated to humble man, and stain the pride of his glory, than to feel that he may at any moment be nourishing a horrid tape-worm in his alimentary canal, or that his muscles may be filled with millions of microscopic _trichinæ_.