24 6 
OF TIIE BANYAN TREE OF INDIA. 
In every history of the vegetable productions of India, we are sure 
to met with a description of the Ficus Bengalensis, called in its native 
country the banyan tree. Some of the specimens in the neighbourhood 
of Calcutta are of great age and of immense size, and excellently adapted 
for the convenience of the inhabitants of that warm climate, who spend 
much of their time in the open air, as well for recreation as while 
engaged in various occupations. Weavers, tailors, &c., may be seen 
busy under the necessary and delightful shade of the widely extended 
canopies of those native trees. The lower branches of this species of fig 
tree are extended laterally to a great distance from the bole, and would 
lie upon the ground did they not produce roots from their lower sides, 
which descending fix themselves in the ground and become stems— 
“ A pillared shade with echoing walks between.” 
As these roots are produced from the lower branches, at pretty regular 
distances from the butt, and afterwards from each other outwards, they 
appear to stand in pretty regular ranks of concentric circles round the 
main stem, and thereby form circular colonnades. 
As the side branches are more lengthened out than the central ones 
rise in height, the tree at half a mile distance appears like a depressed 
cone (fig. A), and the stranger cannot believe it to be a single tree until 
he arrives under it and witnesses its complication of stems and branches. 
Fig. A. 
This species of the fig-tree was introduced into this country so long ago 
as 1690, and ever since has been treated as a stove plant. It grows 
strongly, and has a tree-like habit, but confined to a pot, and necessarily 
diminutive, it seldom exhibits that peculiarity of character by which it 
is so well known and useful in India. A plant of it, however, kept in 
the stove of the Chelsea botanic garden, produced from one of its 
