68 WONDERS OF THE TROPICAL FORESTS. 
Java and Sumatra, a nut exceeding the ordinaiy cocoa- 
nut many times in size, with the additional pMiiliarity 
of presenting a doable, or sometimes even a triple form, 
as if two separate fruits had grown together. These myste- 
rious gifts of the ocexin, the protluct of an unknown tree, 
were believed to be of submarine origin, and to have the 
wonderful power of neuti-alising poisons. On the Waldive 
Islands they were the exclusive property of tlie king, who 
either sold them at an exorbitant price, or made presents 
of them to other potentates. At length, about a hundred 
years ago, the French traveller Soiinerat discovered in 
the uninhabited Seychelles the home of the Lodmcea 
SccJuilarum, which, like the cocoa, grows on the strand 
of that small and secluded group, and drops its large 
nuts into the ssea, which then carries them along to the 
east. The trunk of the Lodoicea rises to the height of 
forty or fifty feet, and bears a crown of immense fan-like 
leaves, upwards of twenty feet long and fifteen broad, 
with foot-stalks seven feet long. As soon as the real 
origin of the %vonderful drift nuts became known, they of 
course immediately lost their imaginary value, to the 
great vexation, no doubt, of the !Maldive potentate, who 
thus found himself deprived of the best part of his scanty 
revenues. 
The Ratans, a most singular genus of creeping plants, 
bjxuriate in the forests of tropiciil Asia. Sometimes their 
slender stems, armed with dreadful spines at every joint, 
climb to the summit of the highest tree; sometimes they 
trail along the ground ; and while it is impossible to find 
out their roots among the intricate tangles of the matted 
underwood, their palm-like tops expand in the sunshine, 
the emblems of successful parasitism. They frequently 
render the forest so impervious, that the distinguished 
naturalist Jnngliuhn, while exploring the woods of Java, 
was obliged to be accompanied by a vanguard of eight 
men, one-half of whom were busy cutting the ratans with 
their batchetSj wliile the others removed the stems. These 
