NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



and, of course, there was not very much to be seen of 

 the herbaceous flora ; but the beauty of the trees and 

 the rich hues of their fohage quite surpassed my 

 anticipations. The majority of these are plants intro- 

 duced either from the larger islands or from more 

 distant tropical countries, that have been planted in 

 the neighbourhood of houses. 



One of the first that strikes a new-comer in the 

 tropics is the mango tree, which, though introduced 

 by man from its original home in tropical Asia, is 

 now common throughout the hotter parts of America. 

 Its widespreading branches, bearing dense tufts of 

 large leathery leaves, make it as welcome for the sake 

 of protection from the sun as for its fruit, which is a 

 luxury that some persons never learn to appreciate. 

 The cinnamon tree {Canella alba), common in most of 

 the West Indian Islands, is another of the plants that 

 serve for ornament and shade while ministering pro- 

 ducts useful to man. Of the smaller shade-trees, the 

 pimento (probably Pimenta acris) was also con- 

 spicuous, and very many others which I failed to 

 recognize, might be added to the new impressions of 

 the first day in the tropics. One of the most curious 

 is that known to the English residents as the sand- 

 box tree, the Hiira crepitans of botanists. It belongs 

 to the EitphorbiacecB, or Spurge family, but is strangely 

 unlike any of the Old-World forms of that order. 

 Here the fruit is in form rather like a small melon, 

 of hard woody texture, divided into numerous — ten 

 to twenty — cells. If, when taken from the tree, the 

 top is sawn off and the seeds scooped out, no farther 

 change occurs, and it may be, and often is, as the 



