THE BANYAN" TREE. 8? 



*' The fig tree, not that kind for fruit renowned, 

 But such, as at this day to Indians known 

 In Malabar or Decan, spreads her arms, 

 Branching so broai and long, that in the ground 

 The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow 

 About the mother tree, a pillar'd shade. 

 High o'er arched, and eclioing wallcs between." 



These roots grow and become important columns of support 

 to the wide and ever extending branches, many of them being 

 multiform or clustered, forming 



"Huge trunks — and each particular trunk a growth 

 Of intertwisted fibres serpentine. 

 Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved— 

 ****** a pillar'd shade." 



Some of these root trunks are not only singularly entwined 

 and twisted, but they have looped upon and attached to them 

 small aerial rootlets which add a new feature unlike anything we 

 had observed. Evidently little roots, in dropping down from the 

 nearly horizontal branches, stoj^ped on the way at different dis- 

 tances, varying from a few inches to a foot or more, to rest and 

 establish new bases of supply, and fastening, by a living growth, 

 to one of the root columns of support, they have pushed out 

 again into the air, and after making a further growth of a few 

 inches, they have again stopped for a similar purpose, fastened 

 to the same column in the same wa}', then pushed out again, re- 

 peating the process until either the rocks are reached or Uioyare 

 absorbed and lost in the older and larger growth to which they 

 have in different places adhered. 



This tree is situated upon a clearing a little to the east of Nas- 

 sau, and a few rods from the highway which skirts tlic harbor. 

 It is near a dwelling house known as "Thompson's Folly" — a 



