536 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



distinguished by the eccentric forms and splendid coloring of their flowers, sometimes 

 resembling winged insects or birds, the Pothos family attracts attention by the beauty 

 of their large, thick- veined, generally arrow-shaped, digitated, or elongated leaves, and 

 form a beautiful contrast to the stiff bromelias or the hairy tillandsias that conjointly 

 adorn the knotty stems and branches of the ancient trees. 



In size of leaf, the Pothos family is surpassed by the large tropical water plants, 

 the Nymphaeas and Nelumbias, among which the Victoria regia, discovered in 1837 

 by Robert Schomburgk in the river Berbice, enjoys the greatest celebrity. The round, 

 light-green leaves of this queen of water-plants measure no less than six feet in diam- 

 eter, and are surrounded by an elevated rim several inches high, and exhibiting the 

 pale carmine-red of the under surface. The odorous white blossoms, deepening into 

 roseate hues, are composed of several hundred petals ; and, measuring no less than 

 fourteen inches in diameter, rival the colossal proportions of the leaves. 



The trunk of several tropical trees offers the remarkable peculiarity of bulging out 

 in the middle like a barrel. In the Brazilian forests, the Pao Barrigudo arrests the 

 attention of every traveler by its odd ventricose shape, nearly half as broad in the 

 centre as long, and gradually tapering towards the bottom and the top, whence spring 

 a few thin and scanty branches. 



In other trees which, struggling upwards to air and light, attain a prodigious alti- 

 tude, or from their enormous girth and the colossal expansion of their branches require 

 steadying from beneath, we find buttresses projecting like rays from all sides of the 

 trunk. They are frequently from six to twelve inches thick, and project from five to 

 fifteen feet, and, as they ascend, gradually sink into the bole and disappear at the 

 hight of from ten to twenty feet from the ground. By the firm resistance which they 

 offer below, the trees are effectually protected from the leverage of the crown, by 

 which they would otherwise be uprooted. Some of these buttresses are so smooth 

 and flat as almost to resemble sawn planks ; as, for instance, in the Bomhax ceiba, 

 one of the most remarkable examples of this wonderful device of Nature. 



In other cases we find the roots fantastically spreading and reveling in a variety of 

 grotesque shapes, such as we nowhere find in the less exuberant vegetation of Europe. 

 Thus, in the india rubber tree (Ficus'' elastica), masses of the roots appear above 

 ground, extending on all sides from the base, and writhing over the surface in serpen- 

 tine undulations, so that the Indian villagers give it the name of the snake-tree. Sir 

 Emerson Tennent mentions an avenue of these trees leading to the botanical garden 

 of Peradenia, in Ceylon, the roots of which meet from either side of the road, and 

 have so covered the surface, as to form a wooden frame-work, the interstices of which 

 retain the materials that form the roadway. These tangled roots sometimes trail to 

 such an extent, that they have been found upwards of 140 feet in length, whilst the 

 tree itself was not thirty feet high. 



The thorns and spines with which many European plants are armed, give but a 

 faint idea of the size which these defensive weapons attain in the tropical zone. The 

 cactuses, the acacias, and many of the palm trees, bristle with sharp-pointed shafts, 

 affording ample protection agaiqst the attacks of hungry animals, and might appropri- 

 ately be called vegetable hedge-hogs, or porcupines. The Toddalia aculeata, a climb- 

 ing plant, very common in the hill-jungles of Ceylon, is thickly studded with knobs, 

 about half an inch high, and from the extremity of each a thorn protrudes, as large 



