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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



novel spectacle. It is certainly something out of the common to 

 see a gigantic tree, with a trunk five or six feet in diameter and 

 eighty or ninety feet high, and sending out limbs as long and 

 massive as an oak, yet "bearing flowers like a rose bush. These 



FIG. 6. GATHERING BANANAS. 



flowers are rich and variegated in color, but chiefly of a bright 

 carnation. Viewed from beneath, they are scarcely visible ; the 

 fragrance is overpowering, and the ground is carpeted with their 

 gay leaves and delicate petals. When seen from a little distance, 

 the ceiba tree in bloom is one of the most splendid productions 

 of Nature a huge and brilliant bouquet, requiring a whole forest 

 to supply the contrasting green. The wood of the ceiba is easily 

 worked, and, moreover, is light and buoyant and not liable to 

 split by exposure to the sun. It is these qualities which make it 

 so valuable for building the different varieties of boats required 

 on the coast. The boats are usually sent from the interior in a 

 rough and partly finished condition, being simply dug out, the 

 outside being left to be finished according to the taste and fancy 

 of the future owner. The boats are commonly fifteen or twenty 

 feet long and about two feet wide, but it is not unusual to meet 

 them of much larger dimensions, sometimes reaching even the 

 great length of one hundred feet. The ends rise gracefully from 



