not having
"passed" their swimming examination, venture to go on the "river", are
in danger of the "rod."

* * * * *

MRS. RAM was told that Mr. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN is a giant in intellect.
She said, "I don't know much about intellect, but he must be a very
big giant to carry an orchard in his buttonhole."

* * * * *

ODONT.!

(_AN ODE TO THE MODERN FLORA._)

Oh, Flora, fair Goddess of Flowers, skies brighten, the gardens
are glowing,
And lo! 'tis the season of Flower Shows, when everything seems
"All-a-blowing!"
And what the dickens you've been up to with the dictionary, I'm
dashed if there's any possibility of knowing.

Talk about "Volapueck." Why, it isn't a circumstance compared with
the floral goddess's crack-jaw.
I've been trying to read the account of a Flower Show to my wife.
Now, at patter-songs I've a slick tongue and slack jaw.
I can do "_John Wellington Wells_" pretty patly; but to read
through a horticultural article
Would give an alligator instantaneous tetanus; and of _meaning_
the words seem to have no particle.
I should like to be introduced, in its Bornean home, to the
glorious plant called Caelo Dyana.
But fancy a footman having to announce Madame SPATHOGLOTTIS
KIMBALLIANA!
Odont. Uro-Skinneri _sounds_ like something medical and epidermic,
but then we're informed that its sepals and petals
Are "reticulated in tender brown and broad rosy-mauve," which
immediately sends one "off the metals."
The Masdevallias may be a respectable family, though _I_ should
not care to marry into it,
But "the hybrid M. Mundyana representing M. Veitchii x M. Ignea"
(though "a wonderfully glowing orange" by all accounts),
sounds so exceedingly mixed and mongrel that I'd certainly
eschew it.
"A noble Catt: Gigas" _sounds_ rather aristocratic: "Catt:
Jacomb," I suppose, is a sort of a relative;
But Od. Citrosmum, sounds awfully odd, and is not _my_ notion of a
reassuring appellative.
And what _are_ you to make of Odont. crisp. Sanderae, which,
whomsoever "Sanderae" may be, _I_ don't want to "crisp"
him;
"A sport of nature unequalled" they call him, and no doubt his
_name_ is, for I can neither clearly articulate, stutter