126 



pfant Tsore, Isege]^/, ansl Tsi^ric/*, 



then, as the moon decreases, its leaves one by one fall off. In the 

 no-moon period, being deprived of all its leaves, it hides itself. Just 

 as the Boriza is influenced by the moon, so are certain shrubs under 

 the sway of the sun. These shrubs are described as growing up 

 daily from the sand until noon, when they gradually diminish, and 

 finally return to the earth at sunset. 



Gerarde tells us that among the wonders of England, worthy 

 of great admiration, is a kind of wood, called Stony Wood, 

 alterable into the hardness of a stone by the action of water. 

 This strange alteration of Nature, he adds, is to be seen in sundry 

 parts of England and Wales ; and then he relates how he himself 

 " being at Rougby (about such time as our fantasticke people did 

 with great concourse and multitudes repaire and run headlong 

 unto the sacred wells of Newnam Regis, in the edge of Warwick- 

 shire, as unto the water of life, which could cure all diseases)," 

 went from thence unto these wells, "where I found growing ouer 

 the same a faire Ashe-tree, whose boughs did hang ouer the spring 

 of water, whereof some that were scare and rotten, and some that 

 of purpose were broken off, fell into the water and were all turned 

 into stones. Of these boughes or parts of the tree I brought into 

 London, which when I had broken in pieces, therein might be 

 scene that the pith and all the rest was turned into stones, still 

 remaining the same shape and fashion that they were of before 

 they were in the water." 



In Hainam, a Chinese island, grows a certain tree known as 

 the Fig of Paradise. Its growth is peculiar : from the centre of a 

 cluster of six or seven leaves springs a branch with no leaves, but 



