“The Ficus Indica is probably the most astounding piece of vegetation on the face of our earth. From one single root it produces a vast green temple of many halls, with cool, shady bowers impervious to the light, and seems created expressly and exclusively for the purpose of supplying shelterless primeval humanity with ready-made dwellings. For neither is its wood of much use, nor are its fruits eatable for man, and if it inspires the Hindus and their neighbors with a profound veneration, it is owing to the surpassing marvel of its well-nigh preternatural growth, its indestructible duration and everlasting self-renewal; to which traits the mysterious gloom of its galleries and avenues adds not a little, yielding a most grateful retreat from the torrid summer heat. The trunk of the tree, at a moderate height from the ground, branches out into several stout limbs which stretch from it horizontally; from these, slender shoots -the so-called " air-roots"-grow downwards until they reach the ground, where they take root, whereupon they increase in thickness and become strong supports for the mother-limb. The central trunk repeats the branching out process at a greater height, and the second circle of limbs in its turn sends down a number of air-roots which form an outer circle of props or pillars. As the central trunk increases in height, it goes on producing tier upon tier of horizontal limbs, and these add row after row to the outer circle of pillars, not indeed with perfect regularity, but so as to form a grove of leafy halls and verdant galleries multiplying ad infinitum. For this evolution is carried on on a gigantic scale. The highest tier of horizontal limbs is said to grow sometimes at an elevation of two hundred feet from the ground, and the whole structure is crowned with the dome of verdure in which the central trunk finally culminates. The leaves, which grow very close together, are five inches long by three and a half broad, and their fine green color pleasantly contrasts with the small red figs, which, however, are not eaten by men."

Such is the tree, more generally known under its popular name of banyan than under the scientific one of Ficus Indica,' the tree which, together

1 This name is supposed to come from the fact that the tree was carried westward by Hindu tradesmen called banyans. This accounts for its being found in places along the Persian Gulf, in parts

with the Ganges and the Himâlaya, completes the picture of India as evoked in a few apt strokes the poet's fancy (see p. 1). To the elephants that wander majestically among its shady walks, and the apes that laugh and gambol in its airy galleries, we must add the noisy parrots and other birds of no less flaming plumage, but softer voice, and to these numerous and playful denizens the berries or small figs disdained by men yield grateful and sufficient food. It is needless to mention that these trees grow singly, not in forests—since one evidently is in itself if not a forest, at least a grove of considerable size. How large, indeed, can scarcely be realized without the help of a few figures. Fortunately many have been accurately measured, and several have attained historical celebrity. Thus the central trunk of one handsome banyan-tree near Madras is known to have been twenty-eight feet in diameter, and to have been surrounded by a first circle of twenty-seven secondary trunks, each about eleven feet in diameter, and from thirty to fifty feet in height, and after that by almost innumerable others, of decreasing stoutness. The largest known banyan tree had over thirteen hundred large trunks, and three thousand smaller ones. Armies of six or seven thousand men have frequently been encamped in its bowers, and it was seen afar as a solitary green hillock, until a violent hurricane half destroyed it in 1783. Besides which, being situated on an island in

of Arabia (Yemen), and even of Africa, although its native land is emphatically the Indian Continent, where it thrives in all provinces, except the table-land of Dekhan,

the Nerbudda, the river has from time to time carried away large slices of its domain, till it is now

reduced to a skeleton of its former glory. What may be its age, no one can tell. Five hundred years are historically recorded. But these trees may get

to be thousands of years old for aught we can know or prove. For since each new trunk, after it has become firmly rooted and has reached a certain average of thickness, inherits the parent trunk's capacity of branching out into horizontal limbs. which in their turn drop root-tendrils into the ground, and consequently absorb the nourishment of ever new soil, there is practically no reason why the multiplying process should ever stop. It is no wonder that almost every village in Hindustân has a banyan-tree which it holds as sacred as a sanctuary.

14. The companions of Alexander who enthusiastically admired the banyan-tree and gave it its name of "Indian fig-tree," leave it uncertain whether they included under that name another variety, which has obtained an even greater renown and importance from the fact that from the oldest times it has been, as it still is, the sacred tree of Indian religions. This is the Ficus Religiosa, very well known under its pretty native and popular names of Ashvattha and Pippala. It is frequently planted next to a banyan so as to have them mix their foliage and stems, from a superstitious notion that they are of different sex and their growing together is an emblem of marriage. The contrast between the large, massive leaves of the banyan, and the light, brilliant, continually vibrating foliage of the pippala is striking and grateful to the eye. The pippala does not reach the stupendous dimensions that the banyan does, nor are its trunks as numerous. But it has a way, wherever a seed is accidentally dropped on top of another tree-say a palm

tree or a building, to sink several fibrous shoots through the air down into the ground, and thus in time, when these shoots have thickened and hardened into trunks, to entirely encompass tree or building, turning it into a most picturesque and at first sight puzzling object. Although the ashvattha alone is professedly held sacred, it is a crime to destroy or injure either of the two; both indifferently shelter in their verdant halls altars and images of gods, as well as the performance of sacrifices and the pious contemplations of holy hermits. Still, where neither banyan nor pippala is familiar, villagers usually pay a certain homage to the largest and oldest tree within their radius, no matter of what kind; and it is not the native trees alone which thrive and expand under that wonderful sky, but those which India shares with Europe and other moderate climes also attain dimensions unheard of elsewhere. Thus Anquetil Duperron mentions having on one of his tramps through the Dekhan enjoyed a noonday rest under an elm tree which could cover over six hundred persons with its shade, and adds:

"One often meets in India these trees, under whose shade travellers while away the hottest time of the day. They cook there such provisions as they carry with them, and drink the water of the ponds near which these trees are planted; you see there sellars of fried rice and fruits in a small way, and crowds of men and horses from various parts of the country.

15. The same exuberance confronts us in almost any specimen of India's vegetation. Plants that grow elsewhere and in India also are sure to reach here extraordinary size and to be amazingly productive. Thus the bamboo, so plentiful in China and