358 THE UNIVERSE. 



floating tables covered with velvet. Owing to their frame- 

 work of nerves, these swimming leaves can support a great 

 weight without sinking. Thus, in these burning regions, 

 the aquatic birds rest upon them, or pass the night on these 

 cool natural rafts. The daughter of one of the most illus- 

 trious botanists in England told me that, when a child, her 

 father had set her upon one of those gigantic leaves, and 

 that she had walked upon it without it sinking. 



Indian mythology is, therefore, not so irrational when it 

 relates that the god Vishnu, armed with a trident, crossed 

 the abyss of eternal waters on a leaf of the Nymphsea, and 

 that one of these served as a floating sea-shell for the grace- 

 ful goddess Lakshmi. 



There are some other leaves which, though they cer- 

 tainly do not spread out in elegant sheets of verdure like 

 those of the Victoria, nevertheless, in unfolding, extend 

 their numerous divisions in a much more extraordinary 

 manner. This is seen in the taliput palm ( Corypha umbra- 

 culifera), a great palm which grows in India, and the spe- 

 cific name of which denotes the broad shadow which its 

 crown of verdure projects upon the ground. Its leaves are 

 supported by a long powerful petiole as high as a man, and 

 under their vast cover forty persons can shelter themselves. 

 We sometimes see leaves of this tree fixed to the ceiling of 

 a collection of natural history, one of them covering it 

 completely. 



