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There is an avenue of canary trees, Canarium commune, which 

 exhibits the best but not the largest buttresses that we ever 

 saw. These appear on the sides of the trunk, as much as twenty 

 feet above the ground, as thin triangular outgrowths three or 

 four feet high, four inches thick, and projecting one or two feet. 

 Most of these have a thickened place below as if the buttress 

 was forming about a broken or a pruned branch. This is prob- 

 ably the case, as one was seen twenty feet up the tree with a 

 branch scar already partly covered with callus; other lower 

 branches frequently have the buttresses already formed. These 

 stem buttresses are not necessarily homologous with the basal 

 ones which appear to arise above a root. Those are long, 

 flexuous, thin, branched, and undulating on the top, so that 

 portions of them may be underground and then reappear eight 

 or ten feet out. These buttresses are as much as six feet high 

 at the base and of every conceivable shape and direction. 



The upper branches of these canary trees are kept completely 

 leafless by the colonies of flying foxes which roost there every day. 

 These large fruit-eating bats leave the trees in the evening, and 

 early in the morning may be seen returning to them in flocks. 

 Their manner of attaching themselves to the branch is interesting. 

 They fly just above it, hook their claws around it as they fly, 

 apparently stumbling over it, swing back and forth for a few 

 seconds, and then come to rest in a vertical position. They 

 rest there all day in the hot sun, although at intervals one wakes 

 up and disturbs his neighbors. The whole colony is aroused if 

 one pounds on the buttress at the base of the trees, and then for 

 a few minutes the air is black with thousands of them circling 

 around their roost. Once during our visit the employees tried 

 to frighten them away with a shotgun and one day kept them 

 from having any sleep, but the next day the whole colony 

 returned to its original place. 



The only American species seen in the garden were the red 

 cedar und the long leaf pine. Another plant was labelled Rhus 

 glabra, but was clearly very different from our American sumac. 



The vicinity of Peradeniya offers interesting landscape and 

 mountain scenery, but has few attractions for the botanist. 



