reaches along the level shores, where a succession of plants is redeeming the land from the sea; there are the vast, and in parts unexplored, forests of the interior; there is the mountain district round Kandy, rising to a height of upwards of 8000 feet above the sea; and cach, it is needless to say, presenting a most interesting diversity both of plants and animals.

One of the greatest deficiencies which our author has pointed out as hitherto existing in our scientific knowledge with regard to this island, is the absence of any complete work on its botany; so that "information regarding the vegetation of the island is scarcely obtainable without extreme trouble, and reference to papers scattered through innumerable periodicals."* When it is remembered that a botanic garden has been established in Ceylon since 1799, this may, at first sight, seem strange. But the multitudinous and heterogeneous duties imposed on the person holding the curatorship of these gardens have, until lately, formed an impediment to the completion of any such work. We are, however, glad to learn, from a postscript to one of our author's notes, that Mr. Thwaites, the present curator of these gardens, has announced the early publication of a new work on the plants of Ceylon, with observations on their habits and uses, in which he is to be assisted by Dr. Hooker.

The first botanic garden in Ceylon was established by Mr. North, in 1799, at Colombo; thence it was in succession transferred to two or three localities, until the present Royal Botanic Garden was formed, about thirty years ago, at Paradenia, a few miles from Kandy. Thus it is situated in the mountain tract of country, which finds its most celebrated elevation in Adam's Peak, and is on the banks of the Mahawelli-Ganga, the greatest of all the many streams which, rising in this mountain region, flow on all sides through the lower lands to the sea.

"The entrance to the Paradenia garden" (says our author) "is through a noble avenue of india-rubber trees (Ficus elastica); and the first object that arrests the admiration of a stranger on entering is a group of palms, which is, I apprehend, unsurpassed both in variety and grandeur. It includes nearly all those indigenous in the island: the towering talpat, the palmyra, the slender areca, and the kitool, with its formidable thorny congener the Caryota horrida, and numerous others less remarkable. . . . . The garden, covering an area of nearly 150 acres, overlooks the noble river that encircles it on three sides; and, surrounding the cultivated parterres, the tall natural woods afford a favourable opportunity for exhibiting some of the wonders of the Ceylon flora-orchidiæ, festoons of flowering creepers (Ipomeas and Bignonias), the guilandina bonduc, with its silicious seeds, the powerful jungle-rope (Bacchinia scandens), and the extra

Vol. i. p. 85. The references in this Article are taken from the first edition.

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ordinary climber, whose strong stays, resembling in form and dimensions the chain-cable of a man-of-war, lash together the tall trees of the forest.

The nurseries, the spice-ground, the orchards, and experimental garden are all in high vigour; and, since the formation of this admirable institution about thirty years ago, the benefits which it has conferred on the colony have more than realised the anticipations of its founders. European and other exotic plants have been largely introduced; the valuable products of the Eastern Archipelago-cloves, nutmegs, vanilla, and other spices-have been acclimatised; foreign fruits without number-mangoes, durians, lichees, loquats, granadillas, and the Avocado pear have been propagated, and their cultivation extended throughout the island; and the tea-shrub, the chocolate, arrow-root, tapioca, West-Indian ginger, and many others, have been domesticated."

Sir Emerson Tennent bears his testimony to the ability and accomplishments of Mr. Thwaites, the present director of these gardens; and those who, like ourselves, had the pleasure of enjoying his acquaintance before he left this country, some twelve years ago, will easily appreciate how valuable his services must be to the colony, and how much botanical science may expect from his forthcoming work on the botany of the island. He has already added several remarkable species to the flora of Ceylon, more especially from the districts south and east of Adam's Peak; and his collections of insects, made in the neighbourhood of Kandy, are a very important contribution to the almost infinite entomology of the island. The richness of the flora will be appreciated when we state, on the authority of a recent report of Mr. Thwaites, that the indigenous phænogamic plants discovered up to August 1856 were 2670, besides 247 ferns and lycopods; a number nearly double that of the flora of England, and little under one-thirtieth of the entire number of known plants.†

The general character of this flora, notwithstanding the presence of some species and a few genera not found on the continent of India, is similar to that of the southern regions of the peninsula and the Dekkan, with a tendency, however, to approach more nearly to the flora of Malacca and of the Eastern Archipelago than the rest of India. But the great diversity of situation, elevation, and general character, in the different regions of Ceylon, as already remarked, gives rise to a great diversity in the flora of its different parts; and the eastern and the western coasts, like those of the great peninsula, are diversified by the different winds to which they are respectively exposed. The western, exposed to the humid and + Ibid. p. 83 n.

* Vol. i. pp. 208, 209.

temperate south-west wind, exhibits its effects in its luxuriant vegetation; whilst the eastern, under the influence of the hot winds, which blow for half the year, exhibits a comparatively dry and arid aspect.*

On the very shore itself the mangroves grow densely, the ripple of the sea washing under their overarching roots. A little landward the sandy plains are covered with a thorny jungle, and every where, around the habitations of man, rise groves of the coco-nut palm, a tree which has been greatly encouraged under the English rule. Further inland we come on the magnificent forests of the island; and the hill country, again, has its own peculiar vegetation, varying at each succeeding height; at one elevation characterised by the banyan and a variety of figs, at another by the tree-ferns that rise from the damp hollows, and highest of all, by the rhododendrons which cover the loftiest heights,-not like the low Alpenrosen of the Alps, but as timber-trees fifty to seventy feet in height, and covered on every branch with a blaze of crimson flowers.

We are so well aware in this country of the value of the bent-grass that abounds on the sand-hills and dunes of our coast, and which by binding the sand assists in protecting the land from the incursions of the sea, that it has been protected from injury by act of parliament,-the only instance, so far as we recollect, of the Legislature interfering for the protection of a wild plant; and the newspapers have recently mentioned the success which has attended Lord Palmerston's cultivation of this plant on his Sligo estates, which the incursions of the seasand threatened to turn into a rabbit-warren. Still more curious is the account which Sir Emerson Tennent gives us of the way in which a succession of plants forms the vanguard of the land against the sea, along the low coasts of Ceylon, and reclaims from the barren ocean these sandy reaches, which the mangrove and the invaluable coco-nut palm will soon occupy. The margin of the land nearest the water is first possessed by plants whose penetrating roots form a breakwater, and thus protect the creeping plants which occupy the drier sand immediately behind, and in their turn shelter a third and erect class of plants. Amongst these creeping plants there is an ipomaa which sends down roots from every joint, and two beans endowed with a peculiar facility for reproduction. But perhaps the most remarkable of the plants which assist in fertilising these arid sands is the Spinifer squarrosus, of which the seeds are contained in a circular head composed of a star of radiating and elastic spines. When the seeds are mature, the heads separate from the stalks, "and are carried by the wind with great * Vol. i. pp. 84, 5.

velocity along the sands, over the surface of which they are impelled on their elastic spines. One of these balls may be followed by the eye for miles as it hurries along the level shore, dropping its seeds as it rolls, which speedily germinate and strike root where they fall. The globular heads are so buoyant as to float lightly on the water; and the uppermost spines acting as sails, they are thus carried across narrow estuaries, to continue the process of embanking on newly formed sand-bars."*

The banks being thus protected from the action of the air above and the waters at their base, other herbaceous plants soon cover them in quick succession. In the next stage low shrubs appear, and behind them a dense growth of peculiar plants; and again, wherever the sand of the shore is mingled with the alluvium of the rivers, another peculiar class of plants arises, of which the mangrove is the most remarkable.

The interior forests of Ceylon are marked by two manifest and striking characteristics,-the existence of very numerous and very magnificent flowering trees, and the endless variety and enormous size and luxuriance of the climbing and parasitical plants. The coral-tree, so called from its scarlet flowers; the murutu, the favourite tree of Sanscrit poetry, with its orange and crimson blossoms; the iron-tree, whose white rose-like flowers are used to decorate the images of Buddha in the various temples, are a few only amongst the magnificent flowering trees with which the island abounds.

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But even more wonderful still must be the profusion of the creepers which affect the forests. "It is the trees of older and loftier growth," says Sir Emerson Tennent, "that exhibit the rank luxuriance of these wonderful epiphytes in the most striking manner. They are tormented by climbing plants of such extraordinary dimensions, that many of them exceed in diameter the girth of a man; and these gigantic appendages are to be seen surmounting the tallest trees of the forest, grasping their stems in firm convolutions, and then flinging their monstrous tendrils over the larger limbs, till they reach the top; whence they descend to the ground in huge festoons, and after including another and another tree in their successive toils, they once more ascend to the summit, and wind the whole into a maze of living network, as massy as if formed by the cable of a lineof-battle ship. When, by and by, the trees on which this singular fabric has become suspended give way under its weight, or sink by their own decay, the fallen trunk speedily disappears, while the convolutions of climbers continue to grow on, exhibiting one of the most marvellous and peculiar living mounds of confusion that it is possible to fancy. Frequently • Vol. i. p. 49.

one of these creepers may be seen holding by one extremity the summit of a tall tree, and grasping with the other an object at some distance near the earth, between which it is strained as tight and straight as if hauled over a block. In all probability the young tendril had been originally fixed in this position by the wind, and retained in it till it had gained its maturity, where it has the appearance of having been artificially arranged as if to support a falling tree."*

Yet another characteristic of the Ceylon forests is the existence of trees whose stems are protected as high as cattle can reach by thorns, which attain a surprising size. Our author speaks of them as a class; but it is evident that the peculiarity is common to plants of a great variety of classes. The thorns are developed in the most diverse manners. In one plant they stud the stem so thickly as to leave the bark barely visible; in another, an enormous thorn protrudes from the extremity of a large knob growing on the stem; another has at every joint a pair of thorns set opposite one another like the horns of an ox; in others the thorns grow in clusters. The influence of these formidable thorns on the forests where they grow is so great as not only to render them impassable to the larger quadrupeds, including even the elephant, but to have been made available as a defence against man.

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"It has been the custom of the Singhalese from time immemorial to employ the thorny trees of their forests in the construction of defences against their enemies. The Mahawanso relates that in the civil wars, in the reign of Prakrama-bahu in the twelfth century, the inhabitants of the southern portion of the island entrenched themselves against his forces behind moats filled with thorns. And at an earlier period, during the contest of Dutugaimunu with Elala, the same authority states that a town he was about to attack was surrounded on all sides by the thorny Dadambo creeper (probably Toddalia aculeata), within which was a triple line of fortifications with one gate of difficult access.'. . . . During the existence of the Kandyan kingdom as an independent state, before its conquest by the British, the frontier forests were so thickened and defended by dense plantations of these thorny palms and climbers at different points, as to exhibit a natural fortification impregnable to the feeble tribes on the other side; and at each pass which led to the level country movable gates, formed of the same thorny beams, were suspended as an ample security against the incursions of the naked and timid lowlanders."+

We all know what a strange tendency the orchids have to grotesque imitations of animal forms; and many of the orchids of Ceylon are true to this characteristic of their family. One of them "bears a name equivalent to the white pigeon-flower,

* Vol. i. p. 104.

† Vol. i. pp. 107, 108.