

THE TALIPAT PALM. 209 



Regina being both sometimes more than fifty feet long. " * 

 The fan-shaped leaves of others are ten to twelve 

 feet in diameter; of this last form of leaf, we may 

 cite that of the " Sabal Umbraculifera" ( Von Martius] 

 of the West Indies, as a good example. Its magni- 

 ficent " shade-giving " leaves form one of the grandest 

 natural fans with which we are acquainted. Quite 

 equal to it is, however, the Talipat palm of Ceylon 

 (Corypha Umbraculifera), another splendid specimen of 

 a fan-leafed palm, whose stem is sometimes 100 

 feet high while its leaves form semicircles sixteen 

 feet in diameter, with an area of nearly 200 square 

 feet each, f 



The immense height to which some of the palm stems 

 rise is another matter which it would be wrong to 

 pass over in silence, and on this head we may just 

 remark that Baron Humboldt mentions having meas- 

 ured one of these great palms in South America, 

 which had attained a height of 192 feet. 



Another marvellous feature in the tropical forest (that 

 wonderland, which like the enchanted palace of some 

 fairy tale, is ever teeming with fresh objects of attrac- 

 tion and beauty), is undoubtedly that of the great ar- 

 borescent grasses. Of these the bamboos of course 

 present the most remarkable examples. Bamboo is a 

 general name commonly applied to a vast number of 

 gigantic grasses, known as the Bambusacea, of which 

 it is stated that there are some 20 genera and 170 



* Tropical Nature, by Alfred R. Wallace, 1878, p. 41. 

 f Ceylon, by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Lieut.-Governor of Ceylon, 

 4th edit., 1860, Vol. i., p. no. 

 Humboldt's Travels. 



VOL. I. 14 



