WILD FIG TREES. 81 
of fruit in every stage of development, the ripened figs being of 
the size of the end of one’s little finger, but as perfect in their 
parts as the larger figs of commerce. Little lizards, like embryo 
monkeys, were here and there seen through the green foliage, 
while below, sheep were browsing, and eating the fallen fruit, 
docile and happy, growing for the shearer their wool, and 
fattening their carcasses for the butcher. These figs are to the 
taste sweet and pleasant, and, though so small, their immense 
number make them valuable. Children eat them, and upon them 
hogs are fattened. Under this tree, the top of the rocky floor 
was covered with a net work of its roots, one of which pene- 
trated the cellar of Mr. Burnside, some three hundred feet distant. 
We saw two of the same species of banyan tree that had ob- 
tained a large growth from seed blown by the wind or depos- 
ited by birds on top of a stone wall. This wall was composed of 
irregular fragments, and was two and a-half feet wide at the top 
and about four feet high. The seed there germinated, pushed 
out their little fibrous roots, which crept down each side of the 
stone wall, and fastened to and extended among the rocks in the 
fields which the wall in part inclosed. These rootlets enlarged 
with the growth of the trees, while from the top of the wall 
stems pushed up into the air. One of the trees had five stems 
whose diameters varied from six to twelve inches. On the top 
of astone wall within the grounds of the Victoria Hotel, there 
is the stump of a tree a foot in diameter, which unquestionably 
grew there, as its roots are still seen where they entered and 
pushed out from among the stones of the wall. Having had 
some experience in setting out, manuring, watching and water- 
ing trees in Connecticut, the pluck, enterprise, persistence and 
independence of these wild Bahama trees challenged our warm- 
est admiration. 
Mr. Burnside also called our attention to a banyan tree upon 
