The familiar, when wrapped in all the majesty of a foreign tongue, can
be very imposing. Some little time back a brother of mine laid out a
new rock-garden at his house in the country. The next year a neighbour
wrote saying that he would be very grateful should my brother be able
to supply him with any of his superfluous rock-plants. My brother
answered, regretting his inability to accede to this request, as,
owing to the dry spring, his rock-garden had failed absolutely, in
fact the only growth visible in it consisted of several hundred
specimens of the showy yellow blooms of the "Leo Elegans." Much
impressed with this sonorous appellation, his correspondent begged for
a few roots of "Leo Elegans." My brother, in his reply, pointed out
that the common dandelion was hardly a sufficient rarity to warrant
its being transplanted.

I went out a second time to the Argentine Republic with Patrick Lyon,
to whom I have already alluded, in order to place a young relative of
his as premium-pupil on an English-owned ranche, or estancia, as it is
locally called. We had an extremely unpleasant voyage out, for at Rio
Janeiro we were unfortunate enough to get yellow fever into the ship,
and we had five deaths on board. I myself was attacked by the fever,
but in its very mildest form, and I was the only one to recover; all
the other victims of the yellow scourge died, and I attribute my own
escape to the heroic remedy administered to me with my own consent by
the ship's doctor. Although Buenos Ayres is quite out of the
yellow-fever zone, the disease has occasionally been brought there
from Brazil, and to Argentines the words "yellow fever" are words of
terror, for in the early "seventies" the population of Buenos Ayres
was more than decimated by a fearful epidemic of the scourge. Our ship
was at once ordered back to Brazil, and was not allowed to discharge