THE CEIBA, OR ftTLl? COTTON" TREE, 91 



and makes up in lateral tipread what it lacks in elevation. The 

 first mentioned silk cotton tree is believed by an apparently well 

 informed Nassau writer, whom we have heretofore quoted, to 

 have been brought from South Carolina, and, as he thinks, all 

 the others upon the island have been derived from it. None of 

 the latter that we saw, exhibit the wonderful formation of booths 

 around and constituting a portion of the stem which characterizes 

 and makes famous their "ancestral tree." 



" The negroes," says Charles Kingsley, " are shy of felling the 

 ceiba. It is a magic tree, haunted by spirits. There are ' too 

 muchjumbies m him,'' the negro says, and of those who dare cut 

 him down, some one will die or come to harm within the year." 

 The one we have described looks indeed as if it was ''possessed," 

 and it is easy for any one to imagine that viewless goblins sport 

 among its roots and bi'anches, and repose in the strange open 

 chambers of its buttressed trunk. Mr. Gosse says that in Ja- 

 maica the. negroes believe that '' if a person throws a stone at the 

 trunk [of a cciba] he will be visited with sickness or other mis- 

 fortune," and that "■ when they intend to cut one down they first 

 pour rum at the roots as a propitiatory offering. " We have no 

 doubt but that the favor of many cmljodied spirits has likewise 

 been secured by a liberal use of good Jamaica rum, a little difl'er- 

 ently administered. 



An old writer states that the silk cotton tree sometimes grows 

 so large that fom'teen thousand persons can assemble under its 

 branches. 



There is a remarkable specimen of this singular tree at Trini- 

 dad, whicli is thus described by Mr. Higgins, an English gentle- 

 man, in his recently published "Notes by a Field Naturalist." 



*' We came almost suddenly upon a true monarch of the woods, 

 a silk cotton tree, [Bombax Ceiba), said to be the largest tree but 

 one on the island. When young, the trunk of the tree is round, 



