134 LEAVES. 



9. MAGNITUDE. 



The Magnitude of leaves varies almost as much 

 as their forms. In the mosses which abound in cold 

 climates, they are extremely minute ; and the forest trees 

 of the North are adorned with leaves which appear 

 diminutive, when compared or rather when contrasted 

 with the foliage of Equatorial plants. There we find 

 the leaves of the Banana, perhaps the same which were 

 employed by our first parents, to supply the want of a 

 more artificial dress ; they being in the opinion of 

 many writers the " Fig leaves" of sacred history. In 

 Ceylon, a country alternately exposed, for many 

 months in succession, to the rays of a vertical sun, and 

 the inclemencies of an unceasing storm, is found the 

 singular Talipot, a single leaf of which is sufficiently 

 large to shelter twenty men from the vicissitudes of 

 the climate in which they dwell. This tree is venera- 

 ted by those who find beneath its branches so kind a 

 shelter, and travellers consider it, as the greatest bless- 

 ing which Heaven has bestowed on the country. And 

 when we regard its subserviency to the wants of the 

 human race, it is not surprising that by the ancients, 

 the wide spreading tree, decorated with leaves and oc- 

 casionally beautified with flowers, should have been 

 held sacred as the very temple of the deities they 

 worshipped. 



10. DURATION. 



The Duration of leaves is also various. In this 

 climate they are mostly deciduous, and every autumn 

 return to their original dust, and enrich the soil from 

 which they derived their own nourishment. But the 



