THE COLOSSEUM.
This delightful summer lounge has just increased its varied attractions, natural and artificial, by one of the rarest productions of nature--an aloe in full bloom: it is a gigantic species, brought from the plains of Mexico for the gratification of the curious in London. The colossal flower stands about twenty-five feet high, and the stalk is of the thickness of a young tree; its clusters of petals resembling a mass of foliage: in fact, it might be mistaken for a tree, were it not for the huge leaves out of which the flower-stem springs. The blossoms are of a yellow colour, and when they are all in fall blow—for as yet only a few are open—the splendour of the sight will be overpowering. This " most delicate monster " of the floral creation appears to bloom with a deliberation proportioned to its slow growth; and if it takes a century to arrive at maturity and exhausts its giant strength in producing one head of flowers, it may be weeks before the blossoms are all developed and die off. Let us hope no untimely frost will nip this prodigious plant, the bloom of which Glumdalclitch might have coveted for a Brobdignag bouquet.
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