Horticulture in Foreign Lands. 



241 



is brought up from the plains on the heads of carriers or on 

 pack-horses. As yet, there is no carriage road made up the 

 hillside. The soil and climate are finely adapted for the 

 growth of trees. 



Most of the great plateau on the hill top, which is some 30 

 by 10 miles in extent at the higher elevation of 5,500 to 7,500 

 feet, is covered with grass. There are sm:Jl groves of the 

 primeval trees. These are called Sholas or Kanals. The Ko- 

 dai Kanal (7. e. "umbrella grove") is a mile long by a quar- 

 ter to a third of a mile wide. The Peria (great) Shola, four 

 miles to the east of the Kodai Kanal, is two miles long by a 

 mile wide. Then there is a lower plateau called the "Lower 

 Palanis, ' ' which is some 1 5 by 20 miles in extent, and was cover- 

 ed with trees. Much of it has been cleared for the" cultivation of 

 coffee, tea, cardamons, bananas, etc. Some of the old trees 

 have been left, and there are immense ones of cinnamon (Cin* 

 namomum iners), nutmeg" (Myristica), olive (Elceocarpus oblon- 

 gus), jack-fruit {Ar to carpus), jambul {Eugenia), two kinds of 

 black-wood (Dalbergia), teak (Tectona), sal (S/iorea), four kinds 

 of - tetranthera (belonging to the Lauracece), two monoceras 

 (of the Eleocarpacece), sandal-wood {Santalum album), bamboos, 

 palms (Caryola, Borassus and Cocos), chanepa (Magnolia tribe), 

 etc. I have said that some of these are immense : they are 

 the cinnamon, monocera, olive, jambul, etc. The people cut 

 the teak, sal, black-w T ood, venga (Ptero carpus), and others that 

 are more valuable for timber, before they become very large. 



The trees in the groves on the upper plateau are good for 

 fuel, but are little used for timber. Large groves are being 

 formed of the Australian eucalypti and acacias. These grow 

 with great rapidity, and seem to find the soil and climate more 

 congenial than those of their native Australia. The blue-gum 

 {Eucalyptus globulus) grows fastest and becomes the largest of 

 these trees. One from a seed which I planted in the spring of 

 1887 is now 20 feet high and 22 inches in girth at the ground. 

 It is now gaining more than a foot in height each month. One 

 that was planted in 1853, a seedling of one }^ear old, had become 

 when I first saw it, in 1886, an immense tree, measuring 9 feet 

 4 inches in girth at a yard above the ground. There were two 

 others planted at the same time in the same yard, each of 

 which measured 9 feet in girth. They have been cut and the 

 stumps dug out. But the largest one is still growing, and is 



