412 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 18!)0. 



gardens. Nothing can rival the beauty of a young healthy cocoanut 

 palm, with its graceful feathery arched leaves. The common wild 

 date palm with its spiny greyish densely tufted leaves is frequently 

 very effective, specially when young, and the magnificent head of 

 large fan-shaped leaves crowning the stems of the common " Brab" 

 or Palmyra Palm is very picturesque. The fish-tail-palm, Caryota 

 urens; is at once graceful, peculiar, and highly ornamental. Its long- 

 drooping clusters of flowers and f raits, originating from the stem, are 

 a feature that strikes all strangers with wonder and surprise. The 

 betel-nut palm has often been called the most graceful of palms, and 

 is when loaded with its bright scarlet fruits, in truth, a striking object . 

 The Oreodoxa regia, the Ptychoxpernta Cuniuixjhamiana, (Seafort/tin 

 elegafis), the oil-palm (Minis gmneemis); Liciatutui sinensis, L. amtrali*. 

 Wa&hingtonia filifera, Cocoa pMmosdi, PIkpiux rapicola, Ilyophovbr 

 Verxchfttf'eMii, and other palms occasionally met with are all very 

 graceful and desirable objects in Bombay gardens, but none of them 

 surpass in grandeur of foliage or magnificence of flowering the Talipot 

 palm (Corypha lunbraculifera), which, however, unfortunately is very 

 rare in Bombay gardens. Though not belonging to the natural order 

 of palms, Cycas, commonly called sago-palms, must be mentioned here 

 as very common in Bombay gardens, and nothing may perhaps be 

 compared to the beauty of the light green feathery, gracefully arching 

 crown of new leaves, contrasting beautifully with the spreading 

 and recurved dark green leaves of the Oycas <:irvi»<il!$, though the 

 much smaller C. revoluta _is not without effect. The screw-palms 

 (Pandanus) form other most picturesque objects of our gardens, 

 while the allied but very differently shaped Qtor ludoviicq galmata. is a 

 frequent ornament. The Travellers' Palm (Ravenala madagascaremis) 

 with its peculiar flattened crown of plantain-like leaves is perhaps 

 one of the most characteristic of tropical plants. Though I am 

 conscious of a great many omissions among characteristic trees, some 

 of which, however, are intended, because those particular trees grow 

 to far greater perfection elsewhere in India, it will be still 

 more difficult to point out the most characteristic shrubs, 

 without omitting a great many. Among these none are, or 

 at least were, more common than Codiaeums or Crotons, 

 the beauty and often curious shape of whose brilliantly -coloured 



