128 THE PALM TREE. 
country, I yet found time to examine and admire the 
wonders of vegetable life which everywhere abounded. 
Huge trees with buttressed stems, tangled climbers 
of fantastic forms, and strange parasitical plants 
everywhere meet the admiring gaze of the naturalist 
fresh from the meadows and heaths of Europe. 
Everywhere, too, rise the graceful Palms, true 
denizens of the tropics, of which they are the most 
striking and characteristic feature. In the districts 
which I visited they 
were abundant, and 
I soon became inte- 
rested in them. 
“The purposes to 
which the different 
parts of Palms are 
applied are very va- ~ 
rious, the fruit, the 
leaves, and the stem, 
all having many uses 
in the different 
species. Some of 
them produce valua- 
ble articles of export 
to our own and other 
countries; but they 
are of far more value 
to the natives of the 
districts where they grow, in many cases furnishing 
the most important necessaries for existence. 
“The Cocoa-nut is known to us only as an agree- 
