belongs to the Pea tribe, and is allied to the Sisso of India. Its wood, which is lighter than the "Blackwood" of Bombay, is used for similar purposes.

The Tamarind tree1, and especially its fine roots, produce a variegated cabinet wood of much beauty, but of such extreme hardness as scarcely to be workable by any ordinary tools.2

As to fruit-trees, it is only on the coast, or near the large villages and towns, that they are found in any perfection. In the deepest jungle the sight of a single coco-nut towering above the other foliage is in Ceylon a never-failing landmark to intimate to a traveller his approach to a village. The natives have a superstition that the coco-nut will not grow out of the sound of the human voice, and will die if the village where it had previously thriven become deserted; the solution of the mystery being in all probability the superior care and manuring which it receives in such localities. In the generality of the forest hamlets there are always to be found a few venerable Tamarind trees of patriarchal proportions, the ubiquitous Jak, with its huge fruits, weighing from 5 to 50lbs. (the largest eatable fruit in the world), each springing from the rugged surface of the bark, and suspended by a powerful stalk, which attaches it to the trunk of the tree. Lime-trees, Oranges, and Shaddocks are carefully cultivated in these little gardens, and occasionally the Rose-apple and the Cachunut, the Pappaya, and invariably as plentiful a supply of Plantains as they find it prudent to raise without

1 Tamarindus Indica.

2 The natives of Western India have a belief that the shade of the tamarind tree is unhealthy, if not poisonous. But in Ceylon it is an object of the people, especially in the north of the island, to build their houses under it, from the conviction that of all trees its shade is the coolest. In this feeling, too, the Europeans are so far disposed to concur that it has been suggested whether there

may not be something peculiar in the respiration of its leaves. The Singhalese have an idea that the twigs of the ranna-wara (Cassia auriculata) diffuse an agreeable coolness, and they pull them for the sake of enjoying it by holding them in their hands or applied to the head. In the south of Ceylon it is called the Matura tea-tree, its leaves being infused as a substitute for tea.

inviting the visits of the wild elephants, with whom they are especial favourites.

These, and the Bilimbi and Guava, the latter of which is naturalised in the jungle around every cottage, are almost the only fruits of the country; but the Pineapple, the Mango, the Avocado-pear, the Custard-apple, the Rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum), the Fig, the Granadilla, and a number of other exotics, are successfully reared in the gardens of the wealthier inhabitants of the towns and villages; and within the last few years the peerless Mangosteen of Malacca, the delicacy of which we can imagine to resemble that of perfumed snow, has been successfully cultivated in the gardens of Caltura and Colombo.

With the exception of the orange, the fruits of Ceylon have one deficiency, common, I apprehend, to all tropical countries. They are wanting in that piquancy which in northern climates is attributable to the exquisite perfection in which the sweet and aromatic flavours are blended with the acidulous. Either the acid is so ascendant as to be repulsive to the European palate, or the saccharine so preponderates as to render them cloying and distasteful.

Still, all other defects are compensated by the coolness which pervades them; and, under the exhaustion of a blazing sun, no more exquisite physical enjoyment can be imagined than the chill and fragrant flesh of the pine-apple, or the abundant juice of the mango, which, when freshly pulled, feels as cool as iced water. But the fruit must be eaten instantly; even an interval of a few minutes after it has been gathered is sufficient to destroy the charm; for, once severed from the stem, it rapidly acquires the hot temperature of the surrounding air.

Sufficient admiration has hardly been given to the marvellous power thus displayed by the vegetable world in adjusting its own temperature, notwithstanding atmospheric fluctuations,-a faculty in the manifestation

of which it appears to present a counterpart to that exhibited by the animal economy in regulating its heat. So uniform is the exercise of the latter faculty in man and the higher animals, that there is barely a difference of three degrees between the warmth of the body in the utmost endurable vicissitudes of heat and cold; and in vegetables an equivalent arrangement enables them in winter to keep their temperature somewhat above that of the surrounding air, and in summer to reduce it far below it. It would almost seem as if plants possessed a power of producing cold analogous to that exhibited by animals in producing heat; and of this beneficent arrangement man enjoys the benefit in the luxurious coolness of the fruit which nature lavishes on the tropics.

The peculiar organisation by which this result is obtained is not free from obscurity, but in all probability the means of adjusting the temperature of plants is simply dependent on evaporation. As regards the power possessed by vegetables of generating heat, although it has been demonstrated to exist, it is in so trifling a degree as to be almost inappreciable, except at the period of germination, when it probably arises from the consumption of oxygen in generating the carbonic acid gas which is then evolved. The faculty of retaining this warmth at night and at other times may, therefore, be referable mainly to the closing of the pores, and the consequent check of evaporation.

On the other hand, the faculty of maintaining a temperature below that of the surrounding air, can only be accounted for by referring it to the mechanical process of imbibing a continuous supply of fresh moisture from the soil, the active transpiration of which imparts coolness to every portion of the tree and its fruit. It requires this combined operation to produce the desired result; and the extent to which evaporation can bring down the temperature of the moisture received by absorption, may be inferred from the fact that Dr.

Hooker, when in the valley of the Ganges, found the fresh milky juice of the Mudar (calotropis) to be but 72°, whilst the damp sand in the bed of the river where it grew was from 90° to 104°.

Even in temperate climates this phenomenon is calculated to excite admiration, but it is still more striking to find the like effect rather increased than diminished in the tropics, where one would suppose that the juices, especially of a small and delicate plant, before they could be cooled by evaporation, would be liable to be heated by the blazing sun.

A difficulty would also seem to present itself in the instance of fruit, whose juices, having to undergo a chemical change, circulation would be conjectured to be slower; and in the instance of those with hard skins, such as the pomegranate, or with a tough leathery coating, like the mango, the evaporation might be imagined to be less than in those of a soft and spongy texture. But all share alike in the general coolness of the plant, so long as circulation supplies fluid for evaporation; and the moment this resource is cut off by the separation of the fruit from the tree, the supply of moisture failing, the process of refrigeration is arrested, and the charm of agreeable freshness gone.1

It only remains to notice the aquatic plants, which are found in greater profusion in the northern and eastern provinces than in any other districts of the island, owing to the innumerable tanks and neglected watercourses which cover the whole surface of this once productive province, but which now only harbour the alligator, or satisfy the thirst of the deer and the elephant.

The chief ornaments of these neglected sheets of water

1 See on this subject LINDLEY'S Introduction to Botany, vol. ii. book 2, ch. viii. p. 215.

CARPENTER, Animal Physiology,

ch. ix. s. 407. CARPENTER's Vegetable Physiology, ch. xi. s. 407. Lond. 1848.

are the large red and white Lotus1, whose flowers may be seen from a great distance reposing on their broad green leaves. In China and some parts of India the black seeds of these plants, which are not unlike little acorns in shape, are served at table in place of almonds, which they are said to resemble, but with a superior delicacy of flavour. At some of the tanks where the lotus grows in profusion in Ceylon, I tasted the seeds enclosed in the torus of the flowers, and found them white and delicately-flavoured, not unlike the small kernel of the pine cone of the Apennines. This red lotus of the island appears to be the one that Herodotus describes as abounding in the Nile in his time, but which is now extinct; with a flower resembling a rose, and a fruit in shape like a wasp's nest, and containing seeds of the size of an olive stone, and of an agreeable flavour.2 But it has clearly no identity with those which he describes as the food of the Lotophagi of Africa, of the size of the mastic3, sweet as a date, and capable of being made into wine.

One species of the water lily, the Nymphæa rubra, with small red flowers, and of great beauty, is common in the ponds near Jaffna and in the Wanny; and we found in the fosse, near the fort of Mulletivoe, the beautiful blue lotus, N. stellata, with lilac petals, approaching to purple in the centre, which had not previously been supposed to be a native of the island.

Another very interesting aquatic plant, which was discovered by Dr. Gardner in the tanks north of Trincomalie, is the Desmanthus natans, with highly sensitive leaves floating on the surface of the water. It is borne

1 Nelumbium speciosum. 2 Herodotus, b. ii. s. 92.

3 The words are "for piyados ὅσον τε τῆς σχινου" (Herod. b. iv. s. 177); and as oxoc means also a squill or a sea-onion, the fruit above referred to, as the food of the Lotophagi, must have been of infinitely larger size and in every way different

from the lotus of the Nile, described in the 2nd book, as well as from the lotus in the East. Lindley records the conjecture that the article referred to by Herodotus was the nabk, the berry of the lote-bush (Zizyphus lotus), which the Arabs of Barbary still eat. (Vegetable Kingdom, p. 582.)