TENACITY OF TREE-LIFH. 83 
their support and growth, so that ‘ with their usurpation of the 
resources of the fig tree, and the fig tree of the mora, the mora, 
unable to support a charge which nature never intended it should, 
dies under its burden, and then the fig tree and its usurping pro- 
geny of vines, receiving no more succor from their late foster 
parent, drop and perish in their turn.” The piratical fig tree we 
have described appeared to be receiving all its nourishment from 
the rocks to which its net-work of roots were fastened, and from 
the air that enveloped its wide spreading and lusty branches. 
No usurping vines imperilled its hfe. 
In the destructive hurricane of 1866, some six or seven large 
trees were torn up by the roots in one of Mr. Burnside’s lots. 
One tree which was completely prostrated, still adhered to the 
rocks by a few of its unsevered roots, and we saw it green and 
growing still, as if nothing unusual or adverse had happened. 
A large Jamaica tamarind tree, four or five feet in diameter 
at its base, was at the same time also prostrated, and it had thus 
far resisted all the efforts of the father of Mr. Burnside during 
his life, and of his son since his death, to kill and get rid of it. 
Fires were built around it, but it was too full of sap to burn, and 
the baffled fires went out. They ‘‘ hacked it” as they had time 
and opportunity, but the wounds soon healed and were covered 
with new bark. It was in the way, but they had thus far been 
unable to wholly abate the nuisance. Atone time a large section 
of the trunk was detached and afterwards removed with very 
great difficulty by piece-meal. After more than twelve years, 
some six or seven feet in length of the butt remains. It is fas- 
tened to the rocks by a very small number of the old, and by large 
re-inforcements of new roots, which this butt end of the old trunk 
has pluckily and persistently formed and tied to the under-lying 
rocks. Every wound it has during all these years received, has 
been perfectly healed, and over the whole of the part from which 
