February 2 n, ISOl. ] 
JOUR.VAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GAR DEFER. 
109 
parched and brown as sheets of paper, yet marvellously retaining a 
vitality which will enable them to throw out their sudden foliage 
as soon as they are bathed in the floods which descend when the 
rains set in in May. By the side of the line huge grasses rise 
12 or 15 feet high, great clumps of B amboo occupy occasional open 
spacer, Convolvuluses and wild (lourds ramp and scramble among 
the bushes, and a lovely plant with small three-petalled pink 
flowers climbs to the top of trees 70 or 80 feet high, and sheets 
them over with tresses and cascades of lovely colour. 
Here and there a native village occupies a clearing in the 
woods, a.nd now and again a larger town with pagodas and 
monasteries comes suddenly into view, while on occasional points 
of vantage are situated barracks or stockades occupied by small 
bodies of troops or of native police. 
Then the scene changes entirely, and for fifty or sixty miles 
on end the eye rests on nothing but huge stretches of Cactus 
■bushes from 5 or G up to 20 feet high ; Cactuses close up to the i 
grasses, and makes a dart at the face of the passer-by, is scarcely 
less certainly fatal. These and other species are numerous, but 
fortunately they are timid creatures, and fly from man ; moreover, 
they are easily killed by a cut with a light and pliable stick. 
Not so the dreaded hamadryad, a huge serpent, which attains a 
length of 12 or !!> feet and the thickness of a man's thigh. When 
suddenly confronted or disturbed this beast pursues and attacks, 
and it needs a swift horse to carry its rider out of danger. 
Col. Plant of Moulmein assured me that he had been chased 
by a hamadryad for a full mile, and only escaped by reason of his 
horse being one of the fleetest in the station. Fortunately this 
snake is as rare as he is formidable, but it was scarcely comforting 
to hear that not long ago one was seen in the elephant lines, only a 
mile from our place of dwelling at Toungoo. The number of 
persons killed annually by snake bites in India is, according to 
Dr. Fayrer (the great authority on the subject), 20,001) ; but it is 
the barefooted and careless natives, who often, moreover, actually 
Fia. Bl.—BURMESE KYOUNG. 
line. Cactuses for miles and miles over the level plain on either 
side, save where here and there a Tamarind tree or other member 
of that great tribe of leguminous plants, which form so large a 
proportion of Indian and Burmese vegetation, rises solitary from 
the midst of the desolation. The prospect is indescribably wild, 
and is only relieved by the distant hills still 4000 or 5000 feet high, 
whose flanks and spurs are densely timbered, and crimson in places 
with the bloom or foliage of some great forest tree. In the almost 
impenetrable recesses of this jungle many a tiger roams, and many 
a deadly snake lies hidden. It was our ill fortune not to see a 
single one while we were in Burma except the cobras and pythons 
of the conjurors, for it was winter and the dry season, and at diis 
time they betake themselves to the cracks and crannies of old 
ruins, or coil themselves up beneath fallen timber or in holes in the 
ground. During the rains they are constantly seen, and even in 
the dry season one soon acquires the habit of avoiding long grass 
or low bushes, or at any rate of beating them with a stick as one 
goes along, and of summoning a servant with a lantern to precede 
one after dark. 
The deadly cobra abounds in Burma, and the green whipsnake 
of the jungle, which coils itself round the stems of reeds or tall 
protect the obra in their mud huts from superstitious motives, 
who swell this terrible deathroll. The European who dons his 
boots and leggings before entering the grass or scrub of the jungle, 
whose rooms are swept carefully every few hours, and who certainly 
has no conscientious scruple about killing a cobra, a ticpalonga, or 
a viper, very rarely falls a victim. 
Finally you enter a third zone of vegetation. Forest trees 
reappear ; Mangoes, Tamarinds, Peepul trees and occasionally 
huge Banyans. Villages become frequent, often stockaded, but 
with their defences falling to pieces, since the establishment of law 
and order under English rule has made them no longer necessary ; 
then great stretchesj of Paddy with ample canals for irrigation, 
plantations of Bananas, Sugarcanes and Betel Pepper, groves of 
Cocoa and Fan Palms. Betel Pepper (Piper Betel) is extensively 
cultivated for its aromatic leaves, which are chewed, mixed with 
lime and the nuts of the Areca Palm (A. catechu), an unpleasant 
habit unhappily prevalent ami.ng the Burmese, whereby their 
naturally ivory-white teeth are blackened. By the .side of the line 
and among the trees, as night comes on fires blaze and flicker, and 
you see that the peasants are busy treading out their grain under 
the feet of pxtient white skinned bullocks in the same primitive 
