IV. 



A British Palm. 



''PHE mention of Palms carries us, in imagination, to a warmer 

 i climate than our own, as we figure the tall, stately, unbranched 

 stem crowned by a few large spreading leaves. But all are not lofty ; 

 in some cases the trunk is very short, or there is only a stout 

 underground stem terminating at the surface of the soil in a leafy 

 crown ; while a Thvinax recently discovered at Anguilla, in the West 

 Indies, generally reaches only about a foot in height — a specimen 

 2 ft. 8 in. being described as quite tall — and a dwarf species of Phcenix, 

 the genus to which the date-palm belongs, discovered shortly before 

 in the East Indies, was likewise only about 25-30 in., forming, 

 with its slender stem, a very attractive little plant. 



Others are not even self-supporting, but climb or scramble over 

 surrounding vegetation. Such are many of the tribe Calameae, 

 which includes the Rattans or Cane-palms (Calamus), with a very 

 long slender stem, stated by Blume, in his " Rumphia " (vol. ii., 

 p. 158), on the authority of Rumphius himself, to reach a length of 

 1,200 to 1,800 feet. This statement has not, however, been verified, 

 though 300 feet is said to be a common length in Ceylon and the 

 Malay archipelago. 



The leaves of the scramblers often terminate in long appendages 

 or flagellae, armed with stout recurved hooks, which may be extremely 

 formidable and dangerous, though of great service to the plant as 

 holdfasts. In one of these, by the way, Korthalsia scaphigera, from 

 the Malay peninsula, the stipules of the leaf are united and swollen, 

 forming an oval, hollow, smooth-walled chamber, of which ants take 

 possession as a home. 



According to the " Genera Plantarum" of Bentham and Hooker, 

 there are about eleven thousand species, many imperfectly known ; 

 while many more, without doubt, remain to be discovered in Africa, 

 Central America, Madagascar, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. 

 The family is essentially a tropical one, the greater number being 

 American, a few Asiatic and Australian, and very few African. In 

 America, a few small genera are peculiar to the Southern 

 United States, such as Serencea, dedicated to the late Sereno 

 Watson by Sir J. Hooker, and found in Florida and Carolina; 

 Washingtonia, inhabitating South California and Arizona ; and 



