PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



[PART I. 



dwarf date-palm, which literally covers the islands of the 

 Sunderbunds at the delta of the Ganges. A dense 

 growth of mangroves 1 occupies the shore, beneath whose 

 overarching roots the ripple of the sea washes unseen 

 over the muddy beach. Ketiring from the strand, 

 there are groups of Sonneratia 2 , Avicennia, Heritiera, 

 and Pandanus ; the latter with a stem like a dwarf 

 palm, round which the serrated leaves ascend in spiral 

 convolutions till they terminate in a pendulous crown, 

 from which drop the amber clusters of beautiful but 

 uneatable fruit, with a close resemblance in shape 

 and colour to that of the pineapple, from which, and 

 from the peculiar arrangement of the leaves, the plant 

 has acquired its name of the " Screw-pine." 



cies Mr. Thwaites is to be assisted 

 by Dr. Hooker, F. B. S. ; and from 

 their conjoint labours we may at last 

 hope for a production worthy of the 

 subject. 



1 Rhisophora Candelaria, Kandelia 

 Khccdei, Bruguiera f/ymnorhiza. 



2 At a meeting 1 of the Entomo- 

 logical Society in 1842, Dr. Tem- 

 pleton sent, for the use of the 

 members, many thin slices of sub- 

 stance to replace cork-wood as a 

 lining for insect cases and drawers. 

 Along with the soft wood he sent the 

 following notice : "In this country 

 (he writes from Colombo, Ceylon, 

 May 19, 1842), along the marshy 

 banks of the large rivers, grows a 

 very large handsome tree, named 

 Sotmeratia acida by the younger 

 Linnjeus ; its roots "spread far and 

 wide through the soft moist earth, 

 and at various distances send up 

 most extraordinary long spindle- 

 shaped excrescences four or five feet 

 above the surface. Of these Sir 

 James Edward Smith remarks, 'what 

 those horn-shaped excrescences are 

 which occupy the soil at some dis- 

 tance from the base of the tree, from 

 a span to a foot in length and of a 

 corky substance, as described by 

 Bumphius, we can offer no conjec- 

 ture.' Most curious things (remarks 



Dr. Templeton) they are; they all 

 spring A-ery narrow from the root, 

 expand as they rise, and then become 

 gradually attenuated, occasionally 

 forking, but never throwing out 

 shoots or leaves, or in any respect 

 resembling the parent root or wood. 

 They are firm and close in their tex- 

 ture, nearly devoid of fibrous struc- 

 ture, and take a moderate polish 

 when cut with a sharp instrument ; 

 but for lining insect boxes and 

 making setting-boards they have no 

 equal in the world. The "finest pin 

 passes in with delightful ease and 

 i smoothness, and is held firmly and 

 I tightly so that there is no risk of the 

 insects becoming disengaged. With 

 a fine saw I form them into little 

 boards and then smooth them with a 

 sharp case knife, but the London 

 veneering-mills would turn them out 

 fit for immediate use, without any 

 necessity for more than a touch of 

 fine glass-paper. Some of my pigmy 

 boards are two feet long by three 

 and a half inches wide, which is more 

 than sufficient for our purpose, and 

 to me they have proved a vast ac- 

 quisition. The natives call them 

 ' Kirilimow,' the latter syllable signi- 

 fying root." TEMPLETON, Trans. 

 Ent. Soc. vol. iii. p. 302. 



