MORALISTS AT FAULT. 
57 
where tliese shrubs abouiid, tbey render the forest abso- 
lutely impassable, even to animals of the greatest size 
and strength. 
The formidable thorny plants of the torrid zone, which 
are often made use of by man to protect his fields and 
plantataons against wild beasts and robbers, have some- 
times even been made to serve as a bulwark against 
hostile invasions. Thus Sir Emerson Tennent informs 
us that, during the existence of the Kandyan kingdom, 
before its conquest by the British, the frontier forests 
were so thickened and defended by dense plantations of 
thorny plants as to form a natnral fortification impregnable 
to the feeble tribes on the other side ; and at each pass 
which led to the level country, movable gates, formed of 
the same thorny beams, were suspended as an ample 
security against the incursions of the naked and timid 
lowlanders. 
Poets and moralists, judging by what they see in 
England, have concluded that fruits of a small sisse, 
whose fall cannot be dangerous to man, invariably grow 
on high trees, while large fruits, such as the pumpkin, 
are only found trailing on the ground. But a visit to 
the tropics would soon convince them of their error, for 
two of the largest and heaviest fruits known, the Brazilian 
nut and the Durian of the Indian Archipelago, grow on 
high forest tre<?s, from which they fall down when ripe, 
and frequently wound or kill the natives. From this," 
says Mr. Wallace, we can learn two things^ — in the first 
place, not to draw general conclusions from a locally very 
limited knowledge of nature, and, secondly, that trees and 
fruits, as well as the manifold productions of the animal 
kingdom, have not been exclusively organised with a 
reference to man," 
H 
