VEGETABLE VAGARIES. 277 
varieties of Mangroves are the more numerous. Ceriops, Aigiceras, Excecaria, 
Bruguiera and other generic types are mingled with Rhizophora and Avicennia. The 
majority of these possess large handsome glossy foliage as ornamental in character as 
that of cultivated Laurels, Euonymi, or Rhododendrons. Rhizophora, in fact, when 
forming as it does on the outskirts compact symmetrical growths, might be readily 
mistaken for a rhododendron bush, and the same might be said of Bruguiera Rheedit. 
Many of the Mangrove species, moreover, produce an abundance of flowers which, if 
not conspicuous for size and beauty, are highly scented and load the surrounding 
atmosphere with sweet perfume. giceras majus is one of these, the white flowers 
growing in profuse bunches at the extremities of the branches and emitting a scent 
almost as powerful as and somewhat resembling that of the Garden Syringa.: 
Rhizophora mucronata, again, produces star-shaped white woolly flowers that are, 
though more diminutive, to a considerable extent suggestive of those of the Fringed 
Violet, Thysanotis, hereafter described. 
The brilliant colours and quaint habits of the singular crabs belonging to the 
genus Gelasimus that occur abundantly amoug the Mangroves have been referred to 
in a previous Chapter. Birds of many varieties abound in the Mangrove thickets. 
They include Honey-eaters attracted-by the flowers, flycatchers, king-fishers, waders, and 
on the sea margin, the fish-eating hawks. Not unfrequently the Fruit-eating Bats, or 
Flying Foxes of the colonists, belonging to the genus Pteropus, take up their abode 
in the denser, rarely invaded, depths of the Mangrove forests. In these secure retreats, 
or rookeries as they are somewhat inappropriately termed—-“ battery” would seem to 
be the correct word—the animals assemble in hundreds or even thousands and pass 
the whole day hanging head downwards asleep, or in a semi-torpid state, from the 
Mangrove branches. As soon, however, as the shades of evening fall, they awake to 
activity and sally forth in long streams to every point of the compass in quest of food. 
The somewhat bean-like fruit of the White Mangrove, Avicennia officinalis, would 
appear to yield these bats an abundant repast at some seasons of the year, while the 
flowers of the many species of Eucalyptus, of which some kinds are almost always in 
bloom, represent a yet more permanent diet. Cultivated fruits such as peaches, 
grapes, mangoes or bananas, are, as dwellers in bat countries well know, a terrible 
temptation to these night marauders, who will travel incredible distances from their 
mangrove or scrub fastnesses to take their toll, often a most heavy one, from the 
crop in season. An individual out of a dense crowd that was surprised and captured 
in the Mangrove thickets in Roebuck Bay, Western Australia, has furnished the 
