THE BANANA ON MOUNTAINS. 453 



neither handsome nor useful, but is a remarkable example 

 of how the flora of the plains country will gradually 

 become acclimatized, even at great altitudes. Settlers 

 are constantly bringing up offsets of the banana and 

 trying them, with varying success, at higher elevations 

 in these mountains, so much so, that we have more 

 than once found ourselves mentally debating the question, 

 will the day ever come when bananas will become 

 so far acclimatized as to grow in England. They have 

 already reached Algeria, the Canary Islands, and Madeira, 

 where they produce eatable fruit, though they are strictly 

 speaking habitants of the equatorial zone. On the 

 other hand the cocoa-nut will allow no such liberties 

 to be taken with its species, and so far as we could 

 judge by careful observations and enquiries in Ceylon, 

 it ceases to grow, at present, just about 1 900 feet above 

 the sea. Passengers on the railway from Colombo to 

 Kandy can see it for themselves. The cocoa-nut (Co cos 

 Nucifera] disappears just above Nawalapitiya, a station 

 on the line which the ordnance survey shows is 1913 

 feet over mean sea-level. 



That Nature does place more or less fixed limits to 

 the range of the different forms of vegetation is plain 

 to be seen by an attentive observer of a great mountain 

 range, and with a good glass he can actually see where 

 the zones which she has drawn on the mountain sides begin 

 and end. Very interesting and instructive is this exami- 

 nation of distant hills, still covered by the natural forest, 

 by the aid of a powerful glass , which we look upon as a 

 sine qua non in making out the details of a wild country. 

 In the tropics, for instance, the traveller can see where 

 the palm trees gradually become blended among a dif- 

 ferent class of trees, and then cease to appear. There 



