prayed that it might overshadow multitudes. It is, probably, some thousand years old, and the Hindoos 
regard it with great veneration. On sacred festivals they repair beneath its shade to worship their respective 
deities, and perform their ablutions in the surrounding stream. This magnificent pavilion was filled with 
a variety of feathered songsters, peacocks, and other birds ; and crowded with whole families of monkeys, 
whose antics were very diverting ; showing their parental affection by teaching the young ones to procure 
their food, and exert themselves with agility in jumping from bough to bough, and then taking more ex- 
tensive leaps, from tree to tree, encouraging them by caresses when timorous and menacing them when 
refractory.” 
Gerarde, to whose description Milton appears to be indebted, calls it the Arched Indian Fig Tree, and 
says, “This rare and admirable tree is very great, straight, and covered with a yellow barke, tending to tawny: 
the boughes are many, very long, tough, and flexible, growing very long in short space, as doe the twigs of 
Oziars, and those so long and weake that the ends thereof hang downe and touch the ground, where they take 
root and grow in such sort, that those twigs become great trees: and these being growne up vnto the like great- 
nesse, doe cast their branches or twiggy tendrils vnto the earth, where they likewise take hold and root; by 
means whereof it cometh to passe, that of one tree is made a great wood or desart of trees, which the Indians 
doe vse for couerture against the extreme heat of the sun, wherewith they are grieuously vexed : some likewise 
vse them for pleasure, cutting downe by a direct line a long walke, or as it were a vault, through the thickest 
part, from which also they cut certaine loope-holes or windowes in some places, to the end to receiue thereby 
the fresh coole aire that entreth thereat, as also for light, that they may see their cattell' that feed thereby, to 
auoid any danger that might happen unto them either by the enemy or wilde beasts; from which vault or close 
walke doth rebound such an admirable eccho or answering voice, if one of them speake vnto another aloud, 
that it doth resound or answer againe fovre or fiue times, according to the height of the voice, to which it 
doth answer, and that so plainly, that it cannot be known from the voice itselfe: the firste or mother of this 
wood or desart of trees, is hard to bee knowne from the children, but by the greatnesse of the body, which 
three men can scarcely fathom about: vpon the branches whereof grow leaues hard and wrinkled in shape, 
like those of the Quince tree, greene aboue, and of a whitish hoary colour vnderneath, whereupon the 
Elephants delight to feed: among which leaues come forth the fruit, of the bignesse of a man’s thumbe, 
in shape like a small fig, but of a sanguine or bloudy colour, and of a sweet taste, but not so pleasante as 
the figs of Spaine; notwithstanding, they are goode to be eaten, and withall very wholesome.” 
The following passages are from the Flora Domestica : — 
Ovid was, as might be expected, a lover of gardens, and by a passage in one of his poems appears to 
have been fond of writing in them. It is in his Tristia, where he is regretting, during his voyage to the 
place of his exile, the delight he used to feel in composing his verses under the genial sky, and among the 
domestic comforts of his native country : 
Non base in nostris, ut quondam, scribimus hortis, 
Nec, consuete, meum, lectule, corpus habes : 
Jactor in indomito brumali luce profundo, 
Ipsaque cseruleis charta feritur aquis. 
Improba pugnat hiems, indignaturque, quod ausim 
Scribere, se rigidas incutiente minas.” 
Lib. i. Eleg. 11. 
Not in my garden, as of old I write, 
With thee, dear couch, to finish the delight : 
I toss upon a ghastly wintery sea, 
While the blue sprinkles dash my poetry. 
Fell winter’s at his war ; and storms the more 
To see me dare to write for all his threatning roar.’ 
It was, perhaps, the general power of sympathy upon the subject of plants, which caused them to be 
connected with some of the earliest events that history records. The mythologies of all nations are full of 
them ; and in all times they have been associated with the soldiery, the government, and the arts. Thus 
the patriot was crowned with oak; the hero and the poet with bay; and beauty with the myrtle. Peace 
had her olive ; Bacchus his ivy ; and whole groves of oak-trees were thought to send out oracular voices in 
the winds. One of the most pleasing parts of state-splendour has been associated with flowers, as Shaks- 
peare seems to have had in his mind when he wrote that beautiful line respecting the accomplished prince, 
Hamlet: 
“ The expectancy and rose of the fair state.” 
We do not find the banian tree mentioned by the expounders of emblems ; but we think it might well 
stand as the type of Colonization. 
