288 BOTANICAL INFOKMATION. 



the sacred Bo-trees in Ceylon are shoots or seeds of tliat 

 tree, or are reputed to be so, and are generally built round 

 to protect tbem from animals. 



" Under the shade of the Nuga tree at Marahona, numbers 

 of an insect that showed a bright light at night were always 

 crawling about ; they have a scaly back, were an inch or an 

 inch and a half long, and one-fourth of an inch broad. 

 (Probably a female glow-worm, as one was brought to me at 

 Matalai, answering exactly to Major Forbes' description. 

 JV. Champion.) In Cordiner's Ceylon, 2 vols. 4to, published 

 about 1804, there is an engraving of a very famous Banyan 

 which grows somewhere on the continent of India." 



The above remarks of Major Forbes, as well as of Captain 

 Champion, are extremely interesting, discriminating at 

 once, as they do cleai-ly^, between the Banyan* tree [Ficus 

 Indica,^ so remarkable and so peculiar for its vast rooting 

 branches, and the Pippal, Peppul, or Sacred Fig of India 

 [Ficus religiosa,) readily known from the Banyan by its root- 

 less branches, and its heart-shaped leaves, with exceedingly 

 long attenuated points ; upon which leaves, the parenchyma 

 being removed, and the skeleton varnished, most beautiful 

 drawings of birds, insects, and flowers, are made by the 

 Chinese, and commonly sold to Europeans. Now, these 

 two celebrated Figs are continually misunderstood by unsci- 

 entific travellers ; and, wiiich is worse, Botanists seem to be 

 very ill acquainted with them : and in the two most popular 

 and scientific works of reference in this country (we allude 

 to Lindley's Introduction to the Natural System of Plants, and 

 Loudon's Encydopcedia of Botany, where it is called F. religi- 

 osa,) the Banyan tree is wrongly named. Our friend Captain 

 Champion too has been slightly misled, in the name given in 

 his letter and upon his drawing, by the Botanist Moon, who, 

 in his Cinghalese Catalogue, calls the Banyan tree of Ceylou 

 Ficus Bengkalensis, while his (Moon's) reference to Rheede, 



* Another source of error among unscientific inquirers arises from the 

 similarity of the name Banyan, with tliat of another well-known eastern 

 plant, the Banana or Plantain. 



