The domes which it forms upon the turf are often three feet high and sometimes ten to fifteen in circumference, arched over with naked, delicate thin branches. In the autumn the stem of the plant rots off, and the globe of branches dries up into a ball, light as a feather, which is then driven through the air by the autumnal winds over the steppe. Numbers of such balls often fly at once over the plain with such rapidity that no horseman can catch them; now hopping with short, quick springs along the ground, now whirling in great circles round each other, rolling onward in a spirit-like dance over the turf, now, caught by an eddy, rising suddenly a hundred feet into the air. Often one wind witch hooks on to another, twenty more join company, and the whole gigantic yet airy mass rolls away before the piping east wind. THE HIGH WOODS --CHARLES KINGSLEY My first feeling on entering the high woods was helplessness, confusion, awe, all but terror. One is afraid at first to venture in fifty yards. Without a compass or the landmark of some opening to or from which he can look, a man must be lost in the first ten minutes, such a sameness is there in the infinite variety. That sameness and variety make it impossible to give any general sketch of a forest. Once inside “you can not see the woods for the trees.” You can only wander on as far as you dare, letting each object impress itself on your mind as it may, and carrying away a confused recollection of innumerable perpendicular lines, all straining upward, in fierce competition, toward the light-food far above; and next on a green cloud, or rather mist, which hovers round your head, and rises, thickening and thickening to an unknown height. The upward lines are of every possible thickness, and of almost every possible hue; what leaves they bear, being for the most part on the tips of the twigs, give a scattered, mist-like appearance to the under foliage. For the first moment, therefore, the forest seems more open than an English wood. But try to walk through it, and ten steps undeceive you. Around your knees are probably Mamures, with creeping stems and fan-shaped leaves, something like those of a young cocoanut palm. You try to brush among them, and are caught up instantly by a string or wire belonging to some other plant. You look up and round: and then you find that the air is full of wires--that you are hung up in a network of fine branches belonging to half a dozen sorts of young trees, and intertwined with as many different species of slender creepers. You thought at your first glance among the tree-stems that you were looking through open air; you find that you are looking through a labyrinth of wire-rigging, and must use the cutlass right and left at every five steps. You push on into a bed of strong sedge-like Sclerias, with cutting edges to their leaves. It is well for you if they are only three, and not six, feet high. In the midst of them