178 



sumption in England is small in comparison with what it is m .Rus- 

 sia, Sweden, Norway and parts of Gfermany, where they are con- 

 stantly employed as a spice for the flavouring of cakes. (Scitaminece.) 



50. Ext ada scandens, Benth.—The bower by the river is formed by 

 ^ this climbing plant, the Cacoon, with a thick, twisted stem, and 



branches which have covered all the neighbouring trees. This is a 

 native plant. It has a very large pod, often 3 feet long, and beans 

 of corresponding size. The beans are sometimes picked up on the 

 shores of the Orkney Islands, carried thither by the Grulf Stream. 

 Long before Columbus was born, they conveyed a message to the 

 Old World, that a land of woods and streams was waiting to wel- 

 come to its hospitable shores any and all who were willing to take 

 advantage of the prodigal gifts of Nature, and make use of them 

 for the benefit of mankind. (Legnminosce.) 



51. Erythrina umbrosa^". B. K., is the tree that is generally used 



in Trindad as shade for Cocoa. Charles Kingsley, in his enthusiastic 

 way, thus speaks of it in his account of a Cocoa plantation : — 



" Our path lay through the first Cacao plantation I had ever 

 seen, though, I am happy to say, not the last by many a one. 



" Imagine an orchard of nut-trees, with very large, long leaves. 

 Each tree is trained to a single stem. Among them, especially 

 near the path, grow plants of the common hothouse Datura, its 

 long white flowers perfuming all the air. They have been planted 

 as landmarks, to prevent the young Cacao trees being cut over when 

 the weeds are cleared. Among them, too, at some twenty yards 

 apart, are the stems of a tree looking much like an ash, save that 

 it is inclined to throw out broad spurs like a Ceiba. You look up, 

 and see that they are Bois immortelles, fifty or sixty feet high, one 

 blaze of vermillion against the blue sky. Those who have stood 

 under a Lombardy poplar in early spring, and looked up at its buds 

 and twigs, showing like pink coral against the blue sky, and have 

 felt the beauty of the sight can imagine faintly — but only faintly 

 — the beauty of these " Madres de Cacao," Cacao-mothers, as they 

 call them here, because their shade is supposed to shelter the Cacao 

 trees, while the dew collected by their leaves keeps the ground be- 

 low always damp. 



" I turned my dazzled eyes down again, and looked into the de- 

 licious darkness under the bushes; The ground was brown with 

 fallen leaves, or green with ferns ; and here and there a slant j:ay 

 of sunlight pierced through the shade, and flashed on the brwn 

 leaves, and on a grey stem, and on a crimson jewel which hung on 

 the stem — and there, again, on a bright orange one ; and as my 

 eye became accustomed to the darkness, I saw that the stems and 

 larger boughs, far away into the wood, were dotted with pods, 

 crimson or yellow or green, of the size and shape of a small hand 

 closed with the fingers straight out. They were the Cacao pcds 

 full of what are called at home cocoa-nibs. And there lay a hei p 

 of them looking like a heap of gay flowers ; and by them sat their 

 brown owner, picking them to pieces and laying the seeds to dry 

 on a cloth. I went up and told him that I came from England, 

 and never saw Cacao before, though I had been eating and drinking 



