82 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
his grounds near his front gateway, having a spread of about one 
hundred feet, inside the body of which there is the dead and 
decayed body of a Pride of India tree. Mr. Burnside is about 
thirty-five years of age, and when a boy, as he said, he ‘often 
went all through the Pride of India tree, and there was nothing 
of the banyan tree to be seen.” A banyan seed in some way— 
perhaps as the result of one of the experiments in raising trees 
of some bold and intelligent bird—found lodgment where the 
branches of the old tree diverged from its stem, from ten to 
fifteen feet from the ground, and, no way dismayed at the dis- 
couraging prospect, it did not repine at its hard destiny, or 
arraign the goodness of Providence, but concluded to make a 
bold and heroic struggle for existence. Its little, minute fibrous 
rootlets started out upon a seemingly hopeless mission. To the 
Pride of India, with its graceful branches, beautiful foliage, 
and large and fragrant clusters of flowers, they were like so 
many gossamer threads. But the days and months and years 
rolled on. The rootlets noiselessly and stealthily passed down 
upon all sides of the trunk that was giving them a support, 
fastened into the rocks, and the doom of the Pride of India was 
forever sealed. The law of ‘‘the survival of the fittest” was 
exemplified. The little rootlets around the trunk enlarged into 
stems, perfectly encircled the old tree with a living wall of a tree 
of a most rampant habit of growth, and now, only by aclose and 
critical inspection, can a stranger ascertain that this immense 
banyan tree perfectly encloses the dead body of a victim, whose 
life it has, anaconda fashion, crushed out. 
Mr. C. Waterton in his ‘‘ Wanderings,” states that in Demerara, 
8. A., the wild fig tree in a similar manner often “rears itself from 
one of the thick branches of the top of the mora,” feeds upon 
the juices of the latter, and in turn is taken possession of by 
vines, and doomed to contribute a portion of its juices towards 
