SWAMPY FOREST, WITH BANYAN TREES. 



27 



far-famed banyan trees, regarded as sacred in some places. Amongst the wonderful 

 phenomena of the vegetable kingdom, as displayed in the tropics, they occupy the 

 foremost place, and the botanist pauses before them, as the geologist does before some 

 rocks, in order to decipher the hieroglyphics of their formation. The most striking 

 peculiarity of these trees is their aerial roots, which, springing from the bark, grow 

 downwards, often from a considerable height, but as soon as they touch the ground 

 they enter it and form a new stem. They also have, in a prominent degree, a ten- 

 dency of growing together as soon as their different parts come in contact with each 

 other (as is the case in other plants, especially some creepers), which causes that 

 extremely fantastic shape generally observed in these trees.* The present species 

 differs from other kinds of banyan with which we became acquainted, not only in its 

 astonishing height (our illustration shows only the lower parts of the stems), but 

 especially by its drooping aerial roots appearing in bundles of tender, originally 

 disconnected fibres, which gradually grow together, and, after reaching the ground, 

 increase in thickness, by which the new stem soon loses, more or less, all 

 traces of its original formation. The height of the whole is so considerable 

 that the crowns reach above that of other trees, and here and there form as it 

 were a forest above a forest, often visible from some distance. The spectator, 

 standing below, soon loses sight of the upper parts of the tree, and only notices 

 accidentally the connection existing amongst trees which at first view would 

 seem to be perfectly unconnected. In vain I attempted to introduce in the 

 original drawing something of the foliage of this tree f ; of the crown little was 

 visible, and the leaves appeared to be comparatively small and of roundish shape. 

 All the young saplings growing about here, and bearing leaves, were those of the 

 Barringtonia acutangula, which does not disdain to assume an epiphytical 

 character on these large masses of wood. The often-mentioned ferns here abound. 

 The bark of this colossal tree is very soft, and of a brownish-yellow colour, whilst 

 the young roots, as long as they are not metamorphosed, are more of a rusty 

 brown. There is also a strong, spiny reed, which at first sight was thought to 



be a Pandanus, but which belonged to the Gyperacece | 2 |\ It grows 



here gregariously, but isolated, in the higher parts of the island, especially on 

 rivulets in forests. 



* These creepers sometimes form a kind of net- the base of the stem of the large Cordia. 

 work around large stems of trees, and seem to f It will be necessary to add that the stem was 



grow more or less together with the bark. Some- even more densely covered with Barringtonias than 



thing of this sort is shown even in the present could be shown without rendering the drawing un- 



illustration, on the left side of the foreground, at intelligible. 



