The Banyan surpasses in diameter the finest oaks of Europe, and throws off numerous branches, of which several redescend towards the earth, force their way into it, take root therein, and in their turn develop into new trunks, whence spring other boughs that go through the same process of fructification; so that a single stem spreads in time into a kind of forest, and the canopy formed by the outgrowth of a solitary tree will frequently overshadow an area of 1700 square yards.

The evergreen foliage of this beautiful tree forms an immense vault, which has justly been compared to the domed roof of a stately edifice supported by a host of columns. Here a myriad birds raise their songs of joy; underneath, the weary pilgrim finds a delightful asylum; from branch to branch leap the mocking ape and the nimble squirrel. The Hindus hold their “Pagod tree” in great veneration. It is to them one of the emblems of their god Siva, and in its dense deep shade they assemble to celebrate their sacrificial rites, whether in honour of this potent deity, or whether in honour of Ganesha, a rural divinity, analogous in his attributes to the Pan of the Greeks and Latins.

Several other tropical trees possess, like the banyan, the property of producing adventitious roots which spring from the trunk or branches which implant themselves in the soil; but not one enjoys an equal power of reproduction and multiplication.

In the Flora of tropical Asia a very important position is occupied by the Laurel family. Several species of this family deserve to be particularized on account of their commercial value: thus, from the Laurus camphora comes the camphor most esteemed by British physicians, while the aromatic rinds of the Laurus cinnamomum, Culilawan, Malabathrum, and Cassia, constitute the various kinds of cinnamon. The Laurus cassia is not to be confounded with another Indian tree, one of the Leguminosæ, the Cassia fistula, whose enormous cods formerly played an important rôle under the name of Cassia in therapeutic science. While speaking of trees which produce aromatic substances, I must not forget to mention the Styrax benzoïn, and the Boswellia serrata. The former is a member of the family Styracaceæ, whose trees or shrubs, chiefly tropical, are known by their monopetalous flowers, their epipetalous stamens, their long radicle, leafy cotyledons, and by a part at least of the ovules being suspended. The Styrax benzoïn, a native of the Indian islands, yields the resin called benzoin. The juice exudes from incisions made in the bark, and when dried, is removed by a knife or chisel. Each tree yields about three pounds’ weight annually, the gum formed during the first three years being superior in quality to that which subsequently exudes. It is largely employed by perfumers, and in medicine is esteemed a remedy for chronic pulmonary disorders. Styrax officinale, a native of the Levant, furnishes the balsamic resinous substance known as storax, which is also one of the materials manipulated by perfumers, and in medicine is used as a stimulating expectorant.

The Boswellia serrata supplies the fragrant incense whose vapours were anciently supposed to be peculiarly agreeable to the gods made by man’s hands or conceived by his imagination.

But it is time we took our leave of India, and allowed “observation with extensive view” to survey the far-spreading African forests. There, in the first place, we are called upon to salute the patriarch of the tropical Flora, the Baobab (Adansonia digitata), a gigantic genus of the family Bombaceæ.

There are other gigantic trees in the forests of Senegambia, as, for instance, the Khaya Senegalensis, which rears its crest to a height of 50 or 60 yards, whose hard reddish-coloured timber belongs to the species known in commerce under the name of Mahogany. Another kind of mahogany, but less valuable, called Senegal Mahogany, is furnished by the Swietenia Senegalensis (family of Meliaceæ, tribe of Cedrelaceæ), named after Baron von Swieten, a Dutch botanist. It forms a stately tree, some 60 or 80 feet high. Swietenia Mahogani, a native of the warmer regions of America and the West Indies, yields the mahogany of commerce. The first discovery of the existence of this kind of wood is ascribed to the carpenter on board Sir Walter Raleigh’s vessel, when lying off Trinidad in 1595. It is not considered to reach perfection under the venerable age of two hundred years. The seeds prepared with oil are used by the modern Mexicans, as they were by the ancient Aztecs, for cosmetic purposes; and the bark is considered a febrifuge.

Among the most curious trees of the Senegal, whose Flora has quite a character of its own, travellers have singled out the Butter Tree (Bassia butyracea, family of the Sapotaceæ), whose fruits contain an edible fatty substance, used by the natives as a substitute for butter; and the Henna (Lawsonia inermis), which also flourishes on the eastern coast and in Upper Egypt. The henna is a shrub from six to seven feet high. Its flowers exhale a goat-like odour, which seems much affected by the Orientals and the natives of Africa. Its roots, of a deep red hue, are distinguished by a bitter taste and astringent properties. Finally, its leaves supply an orange-red colouring matter, with which the Arabs and negroes tint their hair, beard, and nails.

Equatorial Africa possesses several species of Palm-trees peculiar to it. Such are the Thorny Date-tree, the Borassus of Ethiopia, the Raphia vinifera of Congo, which, as its name “wine-bearing” indicates, furnishes a wine analogous to that extracted in other regions from other trees of the same family; the Elæis Guinensis, or Guinea Palm, whence we obtain the well-known product of palm oil. This oil, or palm-tree butter, forms an important article of food among the Guinea negroes. It is imported into Europe in large quantities, and employed in the manufacture of soap.

The forests of the Hottentot and Bechuana countries, and in general of all those regions bordering on the Cape Colony, are frequently of great extent, but mainly composed of trees of small stature, or even of shrubs, such as the Cape Olive, a few Acacias, some Compositæ and Conifers. Forests, as I have said, are rare in the explored portions of the west African coast; they become denser and more numerous as we leave the great ocean in our rear, and penetrate into that vast interior which for ages has been haunted by so many mysteries. Their Flora, however, offers no special character, and does not materially differ from that of Guinea and Senegambia.

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In the forests of Ceylon also flourish the Cambogia Guttu, the Stalagmites Cambogioides, and the Garcinia morella (family Guttiferæ), whence camboge is extracted. This substance, at once medicinal and tinctorial, exudes in a liquid state from wounds made in the bark of the trees; it solidifies spontaneously in the vessels wherein it is collected.

A not less terrible poison is furnished by the Liana Tieuté (Strychnos tieuté), a member of the family Loganiaceæ. It has an exceedingly long stem, but does not yield, like the upas, a whitish milky juice. Its voluminous roots are covered with a thin reddish bark, of a peculiarly bitter taste. By boiling these roots the Javanese obtain the poisonous resin called in Malaysia Upas tieuté, and which was at one time supposed to be identical with the essential element introduced by the Indians of South America into their famous Ourari or Wourali. Sir Richard Schomburgk, however, has shown that the latter is obtained from the Strychnos toxifera, a native of Guiana.

There are several other species of Strychnos; all with flattened, disc-like, and silky seeds, surrounded by pulp. S. nux vomica, a moderate-sized tree, with fruit much like an orange in appearance, furnishes the valuable medicine and fatal poison—for it is both—called Nux vomica. The seeds have an intensely bitter taste, owing to the presence of two most virulent poisons, Strychnia and Brucia; but the pulp is innocuous, and greedily devoured by birds. Strychnos Colubrina, a native of Malabar, furnished a variety of Snakewood, which in cases of bites by serpents is esteemed an infallible remedy. S. Pseudo-quina, which flourishes in Brazil, yields a bark scarcely inferior in value as a tonic and a febrifuge to quinine.

Upon the humid coasts of Borneo and Sumatra, the Casuarinas mingle their weeping branches with those of the mangroves and fig-trees. Palms are common in these two great islands, as well as at Ceylon and at Java. I may mention among the most useful the Nipa fruticans and the Sugar Palm (Areca saccharifera). The transformed leaves which accompany the inflorescence of the Nipa are brimful of a sugared and effervescent liquid, which is extracted by pressure, and converted into a palm wine of indifferent quality, consumed in great quantities in the Sunda Archipelago. A very sweet liquid, a species of syrup fit for the confection of dainty sweetmeats, escapes from incisions made into the floral envelopes of the Areca saccharifera. A tree-wax, analogous to that of the Croton sebiferum, is furnished by the tree which the natives of Borneo designate Pallagrar-Minjok (Dipterocarpus trinervis). And, finally, it is at Borneo and at Sumatra we meet with the Dryobabanops camphora, whence is procured a species of camphor preferred by the Chinese to that of the Laurus camphora; the Urceola elastica, whose milky sap indurates into a kind of caoutchouc, called Suitawan; and the Isonandra-Percha (genus Bassia butyracea, family of the Sapotaceæ), which of recent years has become the staple of an extensive commerce. It is from this tree we obtain the valuable product of gutta-percha, which has received such various and ingenious applications, and is scarcely less useful in the arts than in the sciences.

In the Philippines vegetation is singularly favoured by the humidity of the climate and the elevation of the temperature, so that the Flora of these richly-endowed islands displays a prodigious variety. Not a single family of tropical plants but is here represented by several species. Hill and valley and plain alike are characterized by the exuberant growth of leaf and fruit and flower; the graceful forms might have enchanted an ancient Greek, the wealth of glowing and intense colour would have fired the imagination of Turner, and defied the palette of Titian or Tintoretto. There are landscapes of such beauty and fertility as the fancy of artist or poet never conceived. Ferns and Orchids are, perhaps, even more abundant here than in the forests of Java, Borneo, or Sumatra. The Bamboo attains to unusual proportions; the Areca (Areca catechu) raises to the sky its tall shapely stem, crested with plume-like leaves; and the Betel-nut tree supplies in profusion the grains which, mixed with the fruits of the gigantic palm, constitute the Pinangue; a kind of quid, which the Orientals chew delightedly, and to which they attribute very valuable stomachic and digestive properties. Under the dense shade of the great forests we are amazed by untold numbers of various kinds of plants, all adorned by richly coloured leaves, which invest the scene with a singular charm, nay, with something of a fairy character; and amongst these we single out the Dracæna terminalis, with its blood-empurpled foliage, which, recently introduced into Europe, has already become one of the greatest ornaments of our parks and gardens.

The Australian species are comprised in a small number of families, notably in those of the Coniferæ and Myrtaceæ. Certain forests are wholly composed of Casuarinas; others, of Acacias; others again, of Eucalypti. Some of the latter trees may be ranged among the greatest with which botanists are acquainted. The Blue Gum (Eucalyptus globulus) attains, for instance, the extraordinary stature of upwards of 300 feet, and does not send out a single branch until half this distance from the ground. Its upright cylindrical trunk furnishes a timber much appreciated by ship-wrights, and especially makes admirable masts. The Eucalypti secrete in abundance a white, sugary, and aromatic substance; whence they derive their popular name of “gum trees”—a name which is also bestowed very frequently upon the gum-bearing Acacias.

The Malagasy forests also include several resinous species; among others, the Copal-Tree, which furnishes the well-known gum used in Europe as a varnish; and the Vahea, a genus of Apocynaceæ, yielding caoutchouc, which will hereafter figure largely in the exports from this magnificent island. There are two species, namely, Vahea Madagascariensis—the “Voua Héri” of the natives—and Vahea gummifera. Numerous lianas, and a multitude of epiphytous plants, ferns, and orchids, envelop and intertangle the trunks of the great trees. I shall specify only the Beaded Liana (Abrus precatorius), whose small hard fruits, rounded and of a scarlet red, make graceful wreaths and necklaces; the Angræcum sesquipedale (an orchid), with bright irregular flowers; and the Angræcum fragrans, whose perfumed leaves supply a wholesome and savoury infusion. Finally, the Heritiera argentea, a tree about as large as our lindens, which certain botanists place among the Byttneriaceæ, and others among the Sterculiaceæ, is noticeable on account of its abundant foliage glittering silver-white.

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It is not only in tropical regions that we meet with the giants of the vegetable world. Europe possesses a few of them; isolated, it is true, but comparable in their stature to the most robust denizens of the Torrid Zone: such are the chestnut-tree of Etna, and the plane of Boudjoukdéré, near Constantinople, of which so many travellers have spoken. The remains of the virgin forests of North America also abound in species analogous to our own, and capable of attaining, with an almost incalculable longevity, truly extraordinary proportions.

The lofty table-lands of California (the Rocky Mountains) nourish an entire tribe of gigantic Coniferæ, frequently assembled in immense forests. The Pinus Lambertiana, the Pinus Sabiniana, and the Pinus insignis, are not less than 160 to 180 feet in height; the Douglas Fir boasts of an almost equal stature, with a circumference which varies from 18 to 36 feet. Yet these colossal trees are surpassed by the Sequoia sempervirens, which is 240 to 260 feet high, and by the Titan of Titans, the huge Wellingtonia gigantea, which is also a Sequoia. I shall mention a few individuals of the latter species, whose dimensions may defy all comparison with the greatest trees of the Tropics.

The forests of the West and of the South which have hitherto escaped the torch and the axe of the pioneer present to the traveller’s admiring gaze those magnificent species described so eloquently by Chateaubriand and Cooper, and which are even less remarkable for their gigantic stature than for the majestic elegance of their port, the beauty of their foliage, and the dazzling splendour of their flowers. Some of these forests are partly formed of Oaks whose leaves assume in autumn a purple tint, like the “pupureum lumen” of the Latin poet. In others the dominant trees are the Plane of the West, the Maple, the round-crested Tulip, the large-leaved Catalpa, the Magnolia with white and scented blossoms. To their trunks clings a whole world of climbing, creeping, and parasitic plants; as the Virgin Vine, the Sumach, and the Virginian Jasmine.

Mexico, as far as relates to its climate and productions, has been divided into three distinctly marked regions, defined not by latitude, but by the elevation of various portions of its territory. The upper region, or Cold Lands, is that of the lofty mountains; the mean region, or Temperate Lands, that of the intermediate plateaus; the inferior region, or Hot Lands, is that of the low plains, sometimes arid, sometimes marshy or wooded.

Mexico is the country of the Morus tinctoria and the Hæmatoxylon Campechianum. These two trees furnish the dye-wood which forms so important an article of commerce: the first, under the name of the “yellow wood of Tampico” or “Tuspan;” the second, under that of “Campeachy wood.” It is in the hottest and most humid parts of the southern provinces of this Republic that we meet, for the first time, with one of the most precious trees of the Equinoctial Zone, the Cacao-tree (Theobroma cacao), whose bruised and roasted seeds, mixed with variable amounts of sugar and starch, form the different kinds of Cocoa; or, sweetened and flavoured with vanilla or other substances, the article known as Chocolate. It is but a small tree, with large entire leaves, and clustered flowers growing from the sides of the old stems and branches. Its large pentagonal fruits vary from six to ten inches in length and three to five in breadth, and contain between fifty and a hundred seeds.

The Vanilla planifolia, another Mexican native, famous for its succulent fruit, is a plant of the Orchidaceous order, which climbs about other trees in the manner of ivy. It is the only genus of the family which possesses any economical value. The delicate perfume of its fruit is due to the presence of benzoic acid, which forms in crystals upon the pod, if left undisturbed.

Scarcely less remarkable, and certainly not less useful, than the Traveller’s Tree of Madagascar is the Massaranduba, or Cow Tree, of these grand Brazilian wildernesses. It is one of the largest of the forest monarchs, but rather reminds you of monarchy in its decay than of regal pomp, owing to its deeply-scored reddish and ragged back. A decoction of this bark is used as a red dye for cloth. The copious milk-like fluid which the tree supplies, and which may even be drawn from dry logs that have stood for days in the sun, is wholesome and nutritious, if taken in moderate quantities. On exposure to the air it soon thickens into an excessively tenacious glue.