G4 NATURAL HISTORY. 



densely prolific and apparently useless, but it would be a great error to 

 suppose so, for it is one of the greatest blessings which Providence has 

 bestowed upon man in the savage state. It grows, I have heard, upon all the 

 tropical coasts of Australia, where it is regarded as of no use even by the 

 Aborigines, but to the savages cf the Coral Seas it is food, clothing, shelter, 

 and an infinity of benefit. It delights in rocky and gravelly soils, impreg- 

 nated by the salt spray of the sea (or rather where there i8 no soil, but 

 gravel only,) and so luxuriates desert isles, where it creates impenetrable 

 thickets. Its appearance m very singular; when young it loots like a 

 tussock of ' sword grass,' the edges of the leaves and the ridge in the 

 middle being fringed with small sharp thorns ; these leaves follow each 

 other spirally up the stalk, so that the tree grows with a perfect twist like 

 that of a screw auger. In its earlier stages, when about ten or twelve feet 

 high, it has sometimes a graceful appearance ; as it grows older, it becomes 

 grotesque ; as it is an inhabitant of stony ridges where roots are unable to 

 penetrate to any depth, and of open coasts exposed to the most furious 

 winds, it secures itself a hold upon the earth by throwing out around its 

 butt a number of stays or shrouds, straight, tough and sappy, each of 

 about the thickness of a man's wrist; they grow round the bole of the tree, 

 following its spiral formation, and appear first as a sort of wart or excres- 

 cence ; this soon takes the form of a horn growing downwards ; it is of a 

 delicate pink, smooth and glossy, and cuts soft like a cabbage-stalk, 

 being full of oily sap, which it is important to know will support 

 life of man or animals where there is no water. It continues to grow 

 thus until the point touches the ground, where it takes firm root by sending 

 out a multitude of fibres which penetrate the sand or crevices of rocks, 

 and wrap themselves securely about the stones. Thus, the brave Pandanus 

 will bend to the hurricane, but start — no, not an inch ! When full grown, it 

 reaches 30 or 40 feet, and by that time has sent out many odd-looking 

 limbs branching out from the stem something after the fashion of the 

 golden candlestick in the Tabernacle of Aaron, each crowned at the end by 

 a tuft of drooping leaves, a blossom of a pale yellow (something like the 

 flower of Indian corn and of a strong smell, and a large fruit bigger than 

 a mau's heal, outwardly of a dark green colour and in shape resembling 

 a pine-c me, or the thyrsus represented in the ceremonies of Bacchus. 

 The trunk of the tree is hollow from end to end, and would make excellent 

 drain pipes; the wood is hard as horn and like horn in appearance. I have 

 seen it when used as pillars in some native houses, scraped and polished as 

 bright as mahogany. In the ground it soon decays. The fruit consists of 

 a number of truacated conical polygons, each about 4 inches long, 

 separate from the others, closely wedged together and radiating from the 

 interior stalk. The outer ends of these sections are dark green, impenetrably 

 hard and tough, enclosing eight or ten seeds each, the inner portion, which 



