

THE EQUATORIAL ZONE. 275 



rency has been given by those well-known lines in Darwin's 

 1 Botanic Garden/ beginning : 



' Fierce in dread silence on the blasted heath 

 Fell Upas sits, the Hydra tree of death.' " 



That the effects above mentioned are erroneously attri- 

 buted to the Upas-tree has been proved by the observations 

 of a philosophical traveller, M. de la Condamine, who asserts 

 that " its vicinity is not injurious to animals, as he has seen 

 lizards and insects on its trunk, and birds perched upon the 

 branches.""* The virulent poison which resides in the bark 

 of the tree is however painfully felt by persons who are 

 sensitively constituted, whilst others are not at all affected 

 by it. M. de la Condamine relates that a Javanese whom 

 he commissioned to bring him down some flowering branches 

 of a Upas-tree, which was a hundred feet in height, found 

 it necessary to make notches in it to enable him to climb ; 

 but he had hardly got up so high as twenty-five feet from 

 the ground, when he was taken ill, and was compelled to 

 descend. He became swollen, and continued sick for seve- 

 ral days, suffering from vertigo, nausea, and vomiting; 

 while another Javanese who climbed to the very top and 



* The following particulars of the Upas-tree are gathered from the 

 { Companion to the Botanical Magazine.' 



