244 MOONLIGHT GARDENS 



garden. If the " nim-tree " one of the " lucky " 

 trees above mentioned " be planted around the 

 garden, other trees will be greatly benefited by its 

 influential air," so says the Hindu author, and 

 no doubt he is perfectly right. These graceful 

 nim-trees, with their leaves so like a mountain- 

 ash, and their bunches of green berries, are 

 among the most decorative as well as the most 

 useful trees. In fact the nim may be called the 

 eucalyptus of India, from all the uses to which 

 it is put. Not only does their " influential air " 

 benefit the garden, not only do their branches 

 placed in large vases decorate so prettily Anglo- 

 Indian drawing-rooms, but their dried leaves 

 strewn under bungalow rugs and carpets keep off 

 the dreaded white ants, and laid like lavender 

 among clothes and along bookshelves they 

 frighten away the rapacious, all-devouring cock- 

 roaches. Among Indians its medicinal uses are 

 endless, and in illness boughs are hung over the 

 door, very much as we in England might hang up 

 a sheet steeped in a disinfectant. 



The question of the garden soil was carefully 

 considered. It was placed under three heads : 

 ground situated at a distance from water termed 

 " jangala," that close to water called " anupa," 



