attended with great expense, crippled the resources of
the garden library, and other valuable adjuncts; for
the trees which were planted for the purpose having
been felled and sold, it became necessary to buy timber
at an exorbitant price.
The avenue of Sago-palms, once the admiration of
all visitors, and which for beauty and singularity
was unmatched in any tropical garden, had been swept
away by the same unsparing hand which had destroyed
the teak, mahogany, clove, nutmeg, and cinnamon
groves. In 1847, when I first visited the establishment,
nothing was to be seen of its former beauty and
grandeur, hut a few noble trees or graceful palms
rearing • their heads over a low ragged jungle, or
spreading their broad leaves or naked limbs over
the forlorn hope of a botanical garden, that consisted
of open clay beds, disposed in concentric circles,
and baking into brick under the fervid heat of a
Bengal sun. The rapidity of growth is so great
in this climate, however, that within eight months
from the commencement of the improvements, a great
change had already taken place. The grounds bore
a park-like appearance, broad shady walks had replaced
the narrow winding paths that ran in distorted
lines over the ground, and a large Palmetum, or collection
of tall and graceful palms of various kinds,
occupied several acres at one side of the garden;
whilst a still larger portion of ground was being
appropriated to a picturesque assemblage of certain
closely allied families of plants, whose association
promised to form a novel and attractive object of
Study to the botanist, painter, and landscape-gardener.
This consists of groups of all kinds of bamboos,
tufted growing palms, rattan-canes, plantains, screw-
pines, and similar genera of tropical monocotyle-
donous plants. All are evergreens of the most
vivid hue, some of which, having slender trailing
stems, form magnificent mafeses; others twine round
one another, and present impenetrable hillocks of
green foliage; whilst still others shoot out broad long
wavy leaves from tufted ro o ts; and a fourth class
is supported by aerial roots, diverging on all sides
and from all heights on their stems, every branch of
which is crowned with an enormous plume of grass-
like leaves.*
The great Amherstia tree had been nearly killed by
injudicious treatment, and the baking of the soil above
its roots. This defect was remedied by sinking bamboo
pipes four feet and a half in the earth, and watering
through them. Some fine Orchids were in flower in
the gardens, but few of them fru it; some appear to be
spread by birds amongst the tre e s; but the different
species of Vanda are increasing so fast, that there
seems no doubt that this tribe of air-plants grows
freely from seed in a wild state, though we generally
fail to rear them thus in England.
The great Banyan tree is still the pride and oma-
* Since I left India, these improvements have heen still further carried
out, and I have since heard of five splendid Victoria plants flowering at
once, with Euryale ferox, white, blue, and red water lilies, and white,
yellow, and scarlet lotus, rendering the tanks gorgeous, sunk as their waters
are in frames of green grass, ornamented with clumps of Nipa frvticans
and Phoenix paludosa.