444 



Notes on the Influence 



[No. 3(>, 



kind of hinge or strong fibre wliich passing over the handle connects 

 the vessel with the leaf. By the shrinking or contracting of this 

 fibre the lid is drawn open whenever the weather is showery or dews 

 fall, which would appear to be jast the contrary of what usually hap- 

 l)ens in nature, though the contraction, probably, is occasioned by 

 the hot and dry fibre : and the expansion of the fibre does not take 

 place till the moisture has fallen and saturated the pitcher. When 

 this is the case, the cover falls down and it closes so firmly as to pre- 

 vent any evaporation taking place. The water being gradually ab- 

 sorbed through the handle into the footstalk of the leaf, gives vigor 

 to the leaf itself and sustenance to the plant. As soon as the pitch- 

 ers are exhausted, the lids again open to admit whatever moisture 

 may fall, and when the plant has produced its seed and the dry sea- 

 son fairly sets in it withers with all the covers of the pitchers stand- 

 ing open. 



The manner in which Providence has contrived a supply for the 

 thirst of man in dry situations is equally worthy of admiration. On 

 some parched districts of Africa nature has planted a great tree call- 

 ed by the negroes Poa, the trunk of which of prodigious bulk is na- 

 turally hollowed out like a cistern. In the rainy season it is replen- 

 ished with water, which it keeps cool during the most intense heat 

 by means of the tufted foliage which crowns its summits. Finally, 

 she has placed vegetable fountains on the arid rocks of the Antilles ; 

 you commonly find on them a liane called the water liane, so full of 

 sap that if you cut a single branch as much water is immediately dis- 

 charged as a man can drink at a draught : it is perfectly pure and 

 limpid. In the lagoons of the Bay of Campeachy travellers find re- 

 lief in a difi'erent manner : these lagoons, on a level with the sea, are 

 almost entirely inundated in the rainy season, and are so parched 

 in the dry season that hunters who have accidentally lost their 

 way in the forests by which they are covered, have actually perish- 

 ed of thirst. The celebrated navigator Dampier relates that he 

 several times escaped that calamity by means of a very extraordi- 

 nary species of vegetation, which had been pointed out to him on a 

 kind of pine very common in those parts. It resembles a parcel of 

 leaves placed one over the other in stages and on account of its form 

 and the tree upon which it grows he calls it the pine-apple. Thi.s 

 apple is full of water, so that on piercing the lower part of it with a 

 knife a good pint of very clear and wholesome water immediately 



