120 FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA 



the island's most valuable products, while Miss 

 Taylor describes it asPersea indica. The wood, when 

 cut, is of a deep red colour before being polished. 

 It is a fine forest tree, and has, as a rule, light 

 green foliage, though it occasionally turns crimson. 

 It has given its name to one of the most beautiful 

 bits of scenery in the island, as the Levada dos 

 Vinhaticos, running above the village of Santa Anna, 

 passes through some of the grandest scenery in 

 Madeira. Professor Piazzi Smyth has gone so far 

 as to assert, in " Madeira Spectroscopic," that some 

 of the largest ships of the Spanish Armada were 

 either built of, or internally decorated with, the 

 wood of the tils and vinhaticos of Madeira. This 

 would appear to be a flight of imagination, or a 

 revelation of the learned man's inner consciousness, 

 as it is difficult, if not impossible, to find any 

 grounds for such an assertion, there being no docu- 

 ment extant stating what timber was employed for 

 the building of that celebrated fleet. 



The laurel familiar to us under the name of 

 Portugal laurel, Cerasus lusitanica, assumes the 

 proportions of forest trees, and when I saw it in 

 spring, covered with its long racemes of creamy- 

 white flowers, it quickly dispelled the aversion 

 with which I had always regarded the stumpy, 



