by skilled gardeners,
kept in indifferent vitality by artificial heat and ventilation, with
gaged light and selected water; here it was a rank growth, in its
natural home, and here we knew of its antiquity from birds whose toes
had been molded through scores of centuries to tread its great
leaves.

In the cool fragrance of early morning, with the sun low across the
water, the leaves appeared like huge, milky-white platters, with now
and then little dancing silhouettes running over them. In another
slant of light they seemed atolls scattered thickly through a dark,
quiet sea, with new-blown flowers filling the whole air with
slow-drifting perfume. Best of all, in late afternoon, the true colors
came to the eye--six-foot circles of smooth emerald, with up-turned
hem of rich wine-color. Each had a tell-tale cable lying along the
surface, a score of leaves radiating from one deep hidden root.

Up through mud and black trench-water came the leaf, like a tiny fist
of wrinkles, and day by day spread and uncurled, looking like the
unwieldy paw of a kitten or cub. The keels and ribs covering the
under-side increased in size and strength, and finally the great leaf
was ironed out by the warm sun into a mighty sheet of smooth, emerald
chlorophyll. Then, for a time,--no one has ever taken the trouble to
find out how long,--it was at its best, swinging back and forth at its
moorings with deep upright rim, a notch at one side revealing the
almost invisible seam of the great lobes, and serving, also, as
drainage outlet for excess of rain.

A young leaf occasionally came to grief by reaching the surface amid
several large ones floating close together. Such a leaf expanded, as
usual, but, like a beached boat, was gradually forced high and dry,
hardening into a distorted shape and sinking only with the decay of
the underlying leaves.

The deep crimson of the outside of the rim was merely a reflection
tint, and vanished when the sun shone directly through; but the masses
of sharp spines were very real, and quite efficient in repelling
boarders. The leaf offered safe haven to any creature that could leap
or fly to its surface; but its life would be short indeed if the
casual whim of every baby crocodile or flipper of a young manatee met
with no opposition.

Insects came from water and from air and called the floating leaf
home, and, from now on, its surface was one of the most interesting
and busy arenas in this tropical landscape.