34 On raining Trees, 



In Glass's History of the Canary Islands we have the de- 

 scription of a peculiar tree in the Island of Hierro, which is 

 the means of supplying the inhabitants, man as well as 

 inferior animals, with water ; an island which, but for this 

 marvellous adjunct, would be uninhabitable and abandoned. 

 The tree is called Til by the people of the island, and has 

 attached to it the epithet garse, or sacred. It is situated on 

 the top of a rock terminating the district called Tigulatre, 

 which leads from the shore. A cloud of vapour, which seems 

 to rise from the sea, is impelled towards it ; and being con- 

 densed by the foliage of the tree, the rain falls into a large 

 tank, from which it is measured out by individuals set apart 

 for that purpose by the authorities of the island. 



In confirmation of a circumstance prima facie so incredible, 

 I have here to record a phenomenon, witnessed by myself, 

 equally extraordinary. I had frequently observed, in avenues 

 of trees, that the entire ground engrossed by their shady 

 foliage was completely saturated with moisture; and that 

 during the prevalence of a fog, when the ground without 

 their pale was completely parched, the wet which fell from 

 their branches more resembled a gentle shower than any 

 thing else ; and in investigating the phenomenon which I am 

 disposed to consider entirely electrical^ I think the elm exhi- 

 bits this feature more remarkably than any other tree of the 

 forest. I never, however, was more astonished than I was in 

 the month of September last, on witnessing a very striking ex- 

 ample of this description. I had taken an early walk, on the 

 road leading from Stafford to Lichfield : a dense fog pre- 

 vailed, but the road was dry and dusty, while it was quite 

 otherwise with the line of a few Lombardy poplars ; for from 

 them it rained so plentifully, and so fast, that any one of 

 them might have been used as an admirable shower bath, and 

 the constant stream of water supplied by the aggregate would 

 (had it been directed into a proper channel) have been found 

 quite sufficient to turn an ordinary mill. 



Yours, &c. J. Murray. 



February 4. 1829. 



P. S. — I have met with the ^ana arb5rea in the Canton of 

 the Vallais, and I have described it in my Beauties of Switzer- 

 land [noticed Vol. II. p. 360.], as employed in the way you 

 havfe mentioned in Vol. II. p. 79. 



