cesses of the forest, the Druids of Gaul, Britain, and Germany were accustomed to sacrifice. Virgil, who describes Elysium as abounding in the most luxuriant gifts of nature, represents it as one of the highest enjoyments of the happy spirits to repose on flowery banks and to wander among shady groves; and the Icelanders believe that on the summit of the Boula, a mountain which no one has hitherto ascended, there is a cavern which opens to a paradise in perpetual verdure, delightfully shaded by trees, and abounding in large flocks of sheep.

The Syrians personified their god Rimmon under the figure of a pomegranate; and the Babylonians had one carved on the heads of their walking-sticks, esteeming it a sacred emblem. In the Romish Church, palms are still esteemed sacred; while in some parts of Calabria, they regard the cutting off a single branch from an olive-tree a deed worthy of excommunication. That the Anglo-Saxons worshipped trees, we may infer from Canute's having forbidden that species of idolatry.

The temples of the Greeks were mostly situated in groves; and the Persians, who esteemed woods and forests the most proper for religious sacrifices, ridiculed their more accomplished neighbours for building temples to the gods, who had the whole universe for their residence. The Athenians, much after the same manner of reasoning, would never build a temple to Clemency, believing her most appropriate temples were the hearts of men.

The early Christians, also, being reproached for erecting no temples, Arnobius indignantly asked if it were not an insult to the Deity to suppose that he could not be worshipped without confining him to an habitation?

"Thou, O Spirit, who dost prefer,

Before all temples, the upright heart and pure."

Genghis Khan could not conceive the propriety of

erecting temples, nor could he imagine why God might not be everywhere adored. The same may be said of the ancient Spaniards, Scythians, and Numidians.

The Germans are said to have esteemed sacred even the leaves of the Hyrcinian forest. The natives of New Spain were accustomed to assemble under a tree, sixteen fathoms in circumference, to perform religious sacrifices; and Smith assures us that the Whidah negroes, inhabiting a country beautiful even to poetry, have a grove in almost every village, to which they retire on certain days to make offerings.

Esculent Products of Trees-Cocoanut-tree-Breadfruit-Palo de Vaca, &c.-The COCOANUT-TREE is not only so productive of food, but so useful in other respects, that an elegant writer, in recommending a mild and equitable government to be pursued in India, not solely for the sake of humanity, but also of policy, insists that this tree should be the emblem of the British empire in the East. When old, it yields a species of oil that is used for light; of its juice is made a grateful beverage; the cabbage which grows upon it answers many culinary, and its leaves many mechanical purposes. Its trunk is

used for building, its fibres for cordage, and its shell for domestic utensils. So valuable, indeed, is it, in a national sense, that one of the kings of the Maldive Islands sent an ambassador to Ceylon, when possessed by the Dutch, in a ship not only built, but entirely rigged from the products of this tree. It is also so conspicuous as a landmark, and so little affected by the sea-air or spray, that Captain Flinders was accustomed to say, that any navigator who should distribute ten thousand cocoanuts upon the numerous sandbanks of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, would be entitled to the gratitude of all maritime nations.

The uses and virtues of the plantain, the oil-palm,

and the date-tree,* too, are well known: those of the BREAD-FRUIT-TREE are still more important; and yet it grows in Ceylon, and is little thought of. In Guam it attains a size larger than our apple-trees: when ripe, it is soft and yellow, and its taste sweet; when full-grown, the Guamans bake it, it having neither seed nor stone, but is a pure substance, like bread, and continues in season eight months of the year. Thus the cocoanut-tree, the oil-palm, and the bread

* When I looked on the desert, arid plains which lie between Abusheher and the mountains, and saw the ignorant, half-naked, swarthy men and women broiling under a burning sun, with hardly any food but dates, my bosom swelled with pity for their condition, and I felt the dignity of the human species degraded by their contented looks. Surely," said I to an Armenian, "these people cannot be so foolish as to be happy in this miserable and uninstructed state. They appear a lively, intelligent race; can they be insensible to their comparatively wretched condition? Do they not hear of other countries? Have they no envy, no desire for improvement?" The good old Armenian smiled and said, "No; they are a very happy race of people, and, so far from envying the condition of others, they pity them. But," added he, seeing my surprise, "I will give you an anecdote which will explain the ground of this feeling. Some time since, an Arab woman, an inhabitant of Abusheher, went to England with the children of Mr. B. She remained in your country four years. When she returned, all gathered round her to gratify their curiosity about England. What did you find there? Is it a fine country? Are the people rich-are they happy?' She answered, 'The country was like a garden; the people were rich, had fine clothes, fine houses, fine horses, fine carriages, and were said to be very wise and happy!' Her audience were filled with envy of the English, and a gloom spread over them, which showed discontent at their own condition. They were departing with this sentiment, when the woman happened to say, 'England certainly wants one thing.' 'What is that?' said the Arabs, eagerly. There is not a single datetree in the whole country!' Are you sure?' was the general exclamation. 'Positive,' said the old nurse; I looked for nothing else all the time I was there, but I looked in vain!' This information produced an instantaneous change of feeling among the Arabs; it was pity, not envy, that now filled their breasts; and they went away, wondering how men could live in a country where there were no date-trees!"-Sketches of Persia.

F

fruit-tree furnish, in the countries where they grow, the staff, as it is called, of life. In some parts of Norway, where vegetation is confined principally to moss and lichens, it has been discovered that even those vegetables may, with little trouble, be converted into a bread more palatable and nourishing than the bread of bark, to which the inhabitants have been so long accustomed.

But the greatest of all vegetable phenomena, though not so useful to mankind as the bread-fruit, appears to be the PALO DE VACA. This plant produces a glutinous liquid like an animal substance. It frequently grows upon the barren sides of a rock, and has hard, coriaceous leaves. For several months in the year its foliage is not moistened by a single shower of rain, and its branches appear entirely dried up; but upon piercing the trunk, particularly at the rising of the sun, there flows a sweet and nourishing yellow juice, having a balsamic perfume, and possessing many of the qualities of milk. In the morning, the natives of the countries where this vegetable fountain grows visit it with bowls, in which they carry home the liquid which exudes from it for their children. "So that this tree," says the Baron de Humboldt, "seems to present the picture of a shepherd distributing the milk of his flock." The Araguans call it the cow, the Caucaguans the milk tree. Humboldt, Kunth, and Bredemeyer saw the fruit of this tree, but no naturalist, I believe, has yet seen the flower. Laet, who wrote early in the seventeenth century, mentions a similar tree as

*

* "This vegetable milk possesses all the physical properties of the milk of animals, only it is a little thicker, and mixes easily with water; it also becomes yellow, and thickens on the surface like cream. When boiled, it does not coagulate, but a thick, yellow pellicle is formed on the surface. Acids do not form with this milk any coagulum, as with that of the cow.

"Recently a substance has been extracted from the fresh juice of the carcêa papaya, which appears to be similar to that from the milk of the cow-tree."-Anon.

growing in the province of Cumana. It grows also in the country from Barbata to Lake Maracabo.

In the interior of Africa is a tree (SHEA) which furnishes excellent butter. It resembles an American oak, and its fruit is not unlike the Spanish olive. It grows abundantly in Ashantee, and in the woods near Kabba. This vegetable butter, which is obtained from the kernel, is whiter, more firm, and, in Park's opinion, far better than that produced from COWS. It has also the advantage of keeping all the year without salt, even in that intensely hot country. The cream-fruit of Sierra Leone affords a similar saccharine fluid.

In some regions of America, Africa, and Asia, a liquid exudes from the palm, which by an easy process is converted into wine. Between Table Bay and False Bay, near the Cape of Good Hope, there grows, amid white sand, a shrub, the berries of which make excellent candles. This plant is also well known in the Azores and America, where it is called the candle-berry-myrtle. Vegetable tallow grows in Siac and Sumatra; while the bark of the quillaitree of Chili has many of the properties of soap. In Chili there is likewise a shrub, called thurania, which affords incense equal to that of Arabia. This gum exudes in the form of globules of tears through pores of the bark these globules are white and transparent, having a bitter taste, but an aromatic perfume. In that fine country grows, too, a species of wild basil, sixty miles from the sea, which, in a soil having no appearance of salt, is covered in the morning, from spring to winter, with saline particles, which the inhabitants use as salt.

Poetical Illustrations. I could never wonder, though I have heard others do so, that poets should have feigned the oak to have been originally a patriarch and a sage. Ovid and Lucan give fine descriptions of the oak, and the honours which were paid to it. There is, indeed, scarcely a descriptive or an epic