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At one end of the ponds is a small artificial mangrove swamp, 

 where two of these salt-marsh species are growing well, and 

 exhibiting the two chief ecological features of the group. Son- 

 neratia acida exhibits a great number of pneumatophores, straight, 

 slender, narrowly conical, a foot or so long, and appearing by 

 the hundred around the base of the tree. A Rhizophora bears 

 fruit freely, and one can find all stages in the development of 

 the long heavy hypocotyl while the seed is still attached to the 

 parent tree, can hasten the fall of those nearly ripe, and watch 

 them plant themselves by penetrating deeply into the mud below, 

 and can find all stages of seedlings, from those recently fallen 

 to those with several well developed leaves. 



Next in order comes the collection of palms, occupying a 

 large area, and containing certainly more than a hundred species. 

 Here again the remarkable diversity of vegetative form is at once 

 apparent. There are the straight smooth trunks of the royal 

 palm, Oreodoxa regia, usually swollen near the middle, or the 

 similar smooth trunks of Oreodoxa acuminata, swollen at the 

 base. In Caryota Rumphiana the scars left by the fallen leaves 

 are slightly rough, and the trunk is colonized by rings of epi- 

 phytes, occupying each node. In Scheela regia the whole trunk 

 is rough and covered with epiphytes. In Vorschaffeltia splendida 

 the lower portion of the trunk has prop-roots, after the manner 

 of a pandan. In Corynophora gobanga the persistent leaf bases, 

 are arranged in obvious spirals; in the sealing wax palm, Cyr- 

 tostachys lakka, the sheathing leaf bases are a bright red. Species; 

 of Zalacca and Phytelephas look like herbs rather than trees.. 

 Raphia pedunculata has an inflorescence twelve feet long, while 

 in other genera the fruits may be in clusters only a few inches 

 long. Many species have massive trunks, sometimes two feet 

 in diameter, while the betel palm, Areca catechu, seldom exceeds 

 six inches, and at maturity its height may be over a hundred times 

 its diameter. 



There are two or three plants of the Seychelles Islands palm, 

 Lodoicea seychellarum, whose immense fruit, known as the double 

 coconut, is seen in all botanical collections. These trees are all 

 pistillate, and one is now bearing fruit, pollen having been sent 



