EUPRORBIACEJ^. 67 



I presume, two rings of fresh wood for every year) carried 

 it up to 4,104. 



So we rode on and up the hills, by green and flowery 

 paths, with here and there a cottage and a garden, and groups 

 of enormous Palmistes towering over the tree-tops in every 

 glen, talking over that wondrous weed, whose head we saw 

 still far below. For weed it is, and nothinfj more. The wood 

 is soft and almost useless, save for firing; and the tree it- 

 self, botanists tell us, is neither more nor less than a gigantic 

 Spurge, the cousin-german of the milky garden weeds with 

 which boys burn away their warts. But if the modern theory 

 be true, that when w^e speak (as we are forced to speak) of 

 the relationships of plants, we use no metaphor, but state 

 an actual fact ; that the groups into which we are forced to 

 arrange them indicate not merely similarity of type, but 

 community of descent then how w^onderful is the kindred 

 between the Spurge and the Hura indeed, between all the 

 members of the Euphorbiaceous group, so fantastically various 

 iu outward form ; so abundant, often huge, in the Tropics, 

 while in our remote northern island their only representa- 

 tives are a few weedy Spurges, two Dog's Mercuries weeds 

 likewise and the Box. Wonderful it is if only these last 

 have had the same parentage still more if they have had the 

 same parentage, too, with forms so utterly different from them 



as the prickly-stemmed scarlet-flowered Euphorbia common 



F 2 



