1912-1913-] Some Aspects of Plant-Life. 13 



" Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, 

 A Flask of Wine, a Book of Yerse — and Thou 



Beside me singing in the Wilderness — 

 And Wilderness is Paradise enow." 



In these date - palms the shape of the leaves is worth 

 noting. They are long and narrow, well adapted to withstand 

 wind without injury. 



Among rather curious adaptations found in tropical forests 

 are the branch props of rubber-trees and banyans. 



In our botanic gardens we may by artificial warmth and 

 moisture simulate tropical conditions so well that, if we could 

 only hide the glass and formal walks and piping and supports, 

 we might fancy ourselves in a tropical garden. But, of course, 

 in such glass-houses we can scarcely have the wild abundance 

 of a New Zealand creek or Fijian " bush." Nor can we let 

 many trees flourish unchecked, like the pandanus or screw- 

 pine of these islands, with its curious root-props and grassy 

 leaves, so well adapted to withstand the boisterous winds of 

 such latitudes. Still less can the hothouse gardener allow 

 the rank luxuriance of the central tropical forest, where the 

 heavy miasmas rise from a carpet of mosses, ferns, grasses, and 

 flowers — often so deep that the traveller can scarce make his 

 way ; where even the trees that rise amid this riot of life are 

 clad with epiphytes, blossoming in varied hues and wonderful 

 shapes, and bamboos, palms, and tree-ferns are tied to each 

 other in an almost impenetrable tangle of woody lianes. 



Passing in review some of the adaptations already spoken 

 of, and taking up other cases, we may recall the reduced leaf- 

 surface characteristic of heaths, the thick fleshy stems and 

 spinous leaves of the cacti. It may be remarked that the 

 cactus frequently shows in the young leaves a reversion to a 

 soft, oval, and more primitive type than the later spinous 

 leaves present, and a similar fact may be noted about the 

 seedlings of the gorse. 



A curious adaptation found in some water-plants is seen in 

 the pneumatophores — long stems which the plant sends up 

 above the surface of the water, and which are furnished with 

 pneumathodes or special breathing-apertures. 



The ordinary land-plant when potted and plunged in water 

 wilts and withers, just as it does when subjected to extreme 



