226 THE PLANT WORLD 



Tree of Life. We could get no botanical names, as the labels were all 

 Spanish, as was also our informant. A root lying on a shelf was bloom- 

 ing, with a raceme of bright scarlet flowers. It looked like a Euphor- 

 bia, but was rhubarb — very different from our own. Many poisonous 

 plants and their antidotes were exhibited. One small room was also 

 set apart for the interesting ruins of Copan. 



In the streets of Mexico orchids and cacti plants could be bought, 

 also a candy made from the melon cactus. It was made in the shape 

 of the melon, and slices were cut off. It was quite palatable, but after 

 a little while became stringy. The Japanese village had its usual quota 

 of dwarf evergreens and azaleas. 



Nature has done much for the Filipino. Everything is made of 

 bamboo. The waterproof houses built on stilts and shingled Avith nipa, 

 the leaf of the cocoanut palm, the furniture, almost all of the utensils 

 used in daily life, the beautifully carved and lacquered vases that look 

 just like bronze, even the toys of the children. The windows of the 

 houses are made of a flat, straight, semi-transparent oyster shell, for 

 the purpose, one would think, of keeping people from looking in. You 

 could see the natives making rope from the fibre of a native plant called 

 abaca; weaving the daintiest gauze from the fine strong fibre of the 

 pineapple leaf vdth old-fashioned hand looms. This pina cloth is used 

 not only by the Filipino belles, but in quite large quantities by our own. 

 They can give us points also in ironing. This is done sitting, with a 

 long-handled, flat-bottomed metal reed filled with burning charcoal, 

 passed back and forth just like our smoothing irons. The betel nuts, 

 longer than our pecans, but much like them in shape, were mostly hol- 

 low. Their jute-like exterior is used like a tooth brush, the rest being 

 chewed. The antics of the only caribou or water buffalo, with his 

 small attendant were very diverting, several daily baths being essential. 



A corner in the Horticultural building set apart for Java was also 

 rich in botanical interest. Cocoanuts in all sizes shapes and designs 

 were beautifully carved and etched; calabashes with fine pen-and-ink 

 sketches of native fruits; necklaces of various beans and seeds, partic- 

 ularly the glossy graj' Job's tears {Coix lac ryma -Join); fancy articles 

 and exquisite dojdies made from lace bark ornamented with groups of 

 ferns and edged with French cotton, which though very like our milk- 

 weed is the product of the cotton tree; lace mats of banana fibre; the 

 monkey tamarind, and a bean one and a half inches wide and a foot 

 long, called by the Jamaicans woman's tongue, because the least little 

 breeze set them all in motion. The English gentlemen in charge ab- 

 jured all responsibility as to the name of the latter. Most unique were 

 the lace bark dusters, the handle being the bark in its natural state, 

 while the duster consists of several layers of the bark threshed out to 



