GIANTS. 351 



The great tree of the Nerbudda, often alkided to 

 as the most important of these trees, covers a ver}^ 

 large area, of which a circumference of two thousand 

 feet is still remaining, though some has been swept 

 away. Three hundred and twenty main trunks have 

 been counted, while there are smaller ones to the 

 number of some three thousand, and each of these 

 is constantly sending forth branches and forming 

 pendent root-stocks so as to extend and increase the 

 colony. " Immense popular assemblies are some- 

 times convened beneath this patriarchal fig, and it 

 has been known to shelter seven thousand men at 

 one time beneath its ample shadow." ^ 



The largest forms of the strange cactus tribe are 

 found in California and Mexico. Missionaries who 

 visited these regions more than a century ago men- 

 tion them as remarkable trees without leaves, but 

 branched, and sixty feet in height. The giant cactus 

 {Ccretis gigantcus) inhabits the wildest and most 

 inhospitable regions, where " its fleshy shoots will 

 strike root and grow to a surprising size, in chasms 

 in heaps of stones, where the closest examination 

 can scarcely discover a particle of vegetable soil. 

 Its form is various, and mostly dependent on its age ; 

 the first shape it assumes is that of an immense club, 

 standing upright in the ground, and of double the 



* Forbes's " Oriental Memoirs." 



