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at a ripe old age, 120-150 feet high, supported by great buttresses ; the wood 

 white, soft, valueless"; the great horizontal, dangerously brittle, branches, 

 each in bulk and weight a tree, thrown out at 80-90 feet above the 

 ground, loaded — from the fork— with lodgers : epiphytes, parasites, 

 bromeliads, orchids, sedges, cacti, and other plants, among which nestle 

 quite a colony of insects, birds, snakes, lizards, opossums. 



(I.) Cedar. By this word is meant in Trinidad, Eastern Venezuela, 

 Central America, Cuba and Jamaica, a tall light-wooded tree of the 

 Mahogany order — Cedrelacece, in Melioidece- It is the Ccdrcla ovdorata L . 

 or Red Cedar of the West Indies. The " Cedar" of the Caribbean chain 

 belongs to Bignoniace^ and is a harder though pale colored wood, a 

 favourite of ship-wrights and lighter-builders. Thecedarsof North America, 

 like the type, or original cedar, the cedar of Lebanon and the Deodar of the 

 Himalayas, are Conifers. While our Swamp cedar belong to the nutmeg 

 order, our soft cedar to the Leguiiiiiiosie, and the red and white cedars of the 

 Guianas are Ideas of the Tercbinthaccve or Turpentine order. The name 

 cedar seems to have been applied by the older planters and seamen to 

 any strange forest tree whose wood by its odor, colour or grain, reminded 

 them of the ancient cedar of the Levant. Our common or red Cedar Ceu. 

 odor., grows in rich deep soil to great bulk and height ; the wood, as is well 

 known, is easy to work and employed in numerous ways. The close-grained 

 harder wood of a well-matured tree grown on the hills in a poorer soil and 

 and wind bulfetted, yields in the horquet or fork, furniture slabs of great 

 beauty, quite equal to mahogany. 



(w.j Figuiers or Wild Ficus trees, in Creole generically termed also 

 hois lait from the milky sap, are Ficus l. Urostigma sp. of the sub-order 

 Moreas of the extensive and oddly multiform nettle order Urticacea. Some 

 grow to a large size, and one species at least, the u. iiyniphcafoliLi L, is a 

 matapal (mata palo or tree killer from it winding and climbing round the 

 trunk of another tree to its top, as a liane, crushing it, and overshading it with 

 its large leathery leaves till it supplant the erst supporter as a large tree 

 self-dependent. The wood of all the species 1 have seen cut is white, light 

 and of no special value ; nor is the puny insipid fruit sought but by bats, 

 and perhaps some birds. 



[n) Baldta. This, a stately tree of a valuable order, the SapoUie, is much 

 more worthy of notice than most of those we find in the woods. It grows 

 to probably 120 feet in total height and is often 40-60 ft before it forks or 

 branches. The stem is quite terete or circular, 4 to 6 feet through at base, 

 slowly narrowing, and has very little sapwood, throws out no buttresses 

 till it attains a great age, grows perfectly erect to the first fork, has a rather 

 thick bark containing among other liquids one that stains red, and a copious 

 creamy sap which on drying proves to be a gum nearly allied to gutta 

 percha and applicable to like uses. Properly prepared this gum is valued 

 in England, and might be locally gathered and purified. The timber is a 

 deep red, hard and straight grained, splitting freely, and lasting many 

 years in the weather, thus making it peculiarly suitable for shingles (verv 

 durable as such) and railway sleepers. A great'branch is sometimes broken 

 otf by the weight of a mass of lianes upon it, or the gust of a cyclone ; this 

 leading to the settlement of rain water in the jagged wound, causes decay 

 down the heart of ail old tree tiil ia time it iias a hollow e.vtending far 

 along the centre, and belov*- it decaying wood. I have seen in the back 

 lands of the late General Peschier's estate in Carapichaima, now engulfed in 

 Waterloo, a venerable balata, with a spread at base, of fully ten feet 

 possibly twelve or more, with such a cavernous hollow that it appeared 

 to stand on arches, yet the sap flowing up the uninjured portion.^ of the 

 bark ied with life some staring branches at the head of the tree rather 

 scantily furnished with leaf. '1 his .specimen was no doubt several centuries 



