52 ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND. 



they are to reach comparatively virgia soil, unexhausted 

 by the deep-set roots of the mother truuk. Uuder such 

 exceptional circumstances, the tropical examples of these 

 elastic capsules are by no means mere toys to be lightly 

 played with by ])abes and sucklings. The sand-box tree 

 of the West iiidies has large round fruits, containing 

 seeds about as big as an English horsebean ; and the 

 capsule explodes, wiien ripe, ^vith a detonation like a 

 pistol, scattering its contents with as much violence as a 

 shot from au air-gun. It is dangerous to go too near 

 these natural batteries during the shooting season. A 

 blow in the eye from one would blind a man instantly. 

 I well remember the very first night I spent in my own 

 house in Jamaica, where I went to live shortly after the 

 repression of * Governor l^yre's rebellion,' as everybody 

 calls it locally. All night long I heard somebody, as I 

 thought, practising with a revolver in my own back garden: 

 a sound which somewhat alarmed me under those very 

 unstable social conditions. An earthquake about mid- 

 night, it is true, diverted my attention temporarily from 

 the recurring shots, but didn't produce the slightest effect 

 upon the supposed rebel's devotion to the improvement 

 of his marksmanship. When morning dawned, however, 

 I found it was only a sand-box tree, and that the shots 

 were nothing more than the explosions of the capsules, 

 As to the wonderful tales told about the Brazilian 

 cannon-ball tree, I cannot personally endorse them from 

 original observation, and will not stain this veracious 

 page with any second-hand quotations from the strange 

 stories of modern sciei ufic Munchausens. 



Still higher in the evolutionary scale than the elastic 



