202 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Mar., 1898. 
how you watched in a hushed awe the sun go down behind the curtain 
of cocoanut palms, and thought how beautiful was the world! Palms enter 
largely into the economy of our daily lives; much more largely than most of ug 
imagine, while to millions of our fellow-citizens of the world, palms mean their 
whole existence. Every house is full of articles made from palms. That mat- 
ting on the floor comes from the cocoanut; that fan yonder lady wields go 
gracefully is made of the leaf of the Chinese Chamerops ; that set of chessmen 
is carved from the fruits of the ivory palm; that servant is wielding a brush 
made from the fibre of a palm collected in the haunt of the jaguar and the 
anaconda, and carried many a weary league by Indians. Those beautiful chairs - 
have their seats made of the split stems of a Calamus Palm from Sikkim, the 
same of which the mountain tribes construct their wonderful bridges, which 
are so awe-inspiring to Europeans that one Governor-General of India owed. 
his death to the shock received in crossing one, but over which the native 
trips as lightly as any maiden in a ballroom. In every department of life 
it is the same. Palms are with us everywhere, and to us, dwelling in 
the haunts of civilisation, it is not easy to get far away from some of 
their products. Even the dreaded schoolmaster’s ‘cane,’ of which man 
have painful memories, was nothing but the stem of a palm. In the 
street, too, palm products are much in evidence. Yonder 4 chip” hat, with its 
garniture of quite impossible flowers and the stuffed skin of a slaughtered 
songbird, is made of carefully prepared strips of the leaves of one of the 
Palmetto Palms. The shop windows and the shelves of the grocer and the 
chemist display numerous articles of necessity and luxury made from this 
most useful and beautiful of the vegetable tribes. 
Queensland will grow nearly every palm found on the face of the earth, 
Every effort is being made here to obtain, from all quarters, seeds and plants. 
of Palms, and numbers of the most useful and beautiful are now being 
propagated. There, to your right, you have a fine specimen of the most 
beautiful palm of South America—the Royal Palm, Oreodoxa regia. Tt stands 
4.2\ feet in height from the ground to the top of the crown of foliage. Upto the 
bases of the leaves, it is an ashy-grey pillar, girt from top to bottom with a- 
series of rings where the old leaves haye fallen off. At the base of the tuft 
of graceful feathery leaves you will note one or two green tongue-like processes 
thrust out. These are the unopened sheaths which protect the flower, and 
when these burst, the sulphur-coloured flowers hang out in graceful clusters, and 
are soon discovered by a multitude of bees. This palm is a native of Brazil, and 
one of the most beautiful avenues in the world is that inthe Botanic Gardens at 
Rio de Janeiro, composed solely of this palm. The people of Rio are very proud 
of this avenue. At Honolulu this palm isa marked feature in the landscape. Sir 
Hugh Nelson, when visiting that island, brought back some seeds of this palm, 
which have successfully germinated and will shortly be planted out. Dr. 
Seeman, who wrote such a delightful Natural History of Palms, writing of his 
first impressions of these lovely plants in their South American home, says:— 
“Even ere the anxious voyager has set his foot on shore he has already 
perceived their graceful foliage fluttering in the beeeze, and waving, ag 
it were, a hearty welcome to the newly arriving stranger. Since the 
time when Columbus first discovered the West Indian Islands to the present 
day, these palms have been seen and admired by all whom possess an 
eye for the beautiful; and I shall never forget the delight experienced 
when the steamer which had brought me from Europe approached at sunrise 
the Island of Barbadoes, and allowed me to behold for the first time these 
noble representatives of a truly tropical vegetation.” The palms above alluded 
to are Oreodoxa regia and the Jamaican Cabbage Palm, Oreodoxa oleracea. 
If you turn to the illustration facing page 138 in the Journal of last 
month, you will find at the right, beneath the giant Sabal, a palm of con- 
siderable horticultural interest. It is one of the best of all for decorative 
work in dwelling-houses. Its name is Raphis flabelliformis. It succeeds well 
