SOME CURIOUS VEGETABLE GROWTHS. 33 



of Prince Schwartzenberg, in Bohemia. In these forests are beech- 

 trees a hundred to a hundred and twenty feet high, with trunks three 

 or four feet in diameter ; and pyramidal pines, four to eight feet in 

 diameter, and towering to a height of from one hundred and twenty 

 to two hundred feet. The dense foliage of these gigantic plants ex- 

 cludes the rays of the sun, and keeps all around them in impenetrable 

 obscurity. The voices of the birds are hushed, and the silence of the 

 solitude is broken only by the soughing of the wind through the foli- 

 age of the colossal trees. Old trees, which have fallen and decayed, 

 furnish a rich and congenial base in which young larches and pines 

 readily take root, and from which they may grow for centuries, draw- 

 ing nourishment from the juices supplied from the slowly rotting trunk. 

 This, at least, appears to be the case with the trees in our cut, which 

 represents an actual group of trees growing upon the trunk of a fallen 

 ancestor, some of which are nearly as large as the decaying monster 

 itself, while that still keeps its shape. 



Herr Haeckel, in the " Letters of Indian Travel " which he is pub- 

 lishing in the " Deutsche Rundschau," gives some glowing descrip- 

 tions of the beautiful and curious forms of tropical vegetation which 

 he met in the forests and jungles and gardens of Ceylon. Down in 

 the valley away below him, as he journeyed by rail from Kandy to 

 Peradenia, he observed in the jungles which alternate with the culti- 

 vated lands, towering above all the other trees, the giant stems of the 

 talipat palm ( Corypha umbraculifera), " queen among the palms of 

 Ceylon." Its perfectly straight white trunk resembles a slender marble 

 pillar, and often rises to a height of more than a hundred feet. Each 

 one of the fan-shaped leaves of its stately crown covers a semicircle 

 sixteen feet in diameter, or a surface of two hundred square feet. Nu- 

 merous applications are made of the leaves, the most important, per- 

 haps, being for purposes of thatching. They formerly constituted the 

 only substitute which the Singlalese had for paper, and are still used 

 to a considerable extent for that purpose. The ancient pushola manu- 

 scripts in the Buddhist cloisters were all written with iron styles on 

 o/a-paper, or narrow strips of tali pat-leaves prepared by steeping and 

 drying them. The talipat blooms but once in its life, generally 

 between its fiftieth and eightieth year. The magnificent pyramid of 

 flowers rises from the top immediately above the mass of the foliage, 

 to a height of thirty or forty feet, and is composed of millions of 

 little whitish vellow blossoms; and the tree dies as soon as the nuts 

 are ripe. 



On the road between Colombo and Point de Galle, although the 

 general character of the landscape varied but little, the traveler's eye 

 was never tired, for the constant charm of the cocoa and the inexhaust- 

 ible variety in the grouping of the palms prevented any monotony. 

 The delicately feathered leaves of the cocoas, with the fanning of the 

 sea-breezes, tempered the heat of the sun. without excluding his rays. 



VOL. XXII. 3 



