l-tree.

Prettiest and freshest were the nutmegs, which had a glen all to
themselves and perfumed the surrounding air. In Trinidad and in Grenada
I believe the nutmegs are the largest that are known, being from thirty
to forty feet high; leaves brilliant green, something like the leaves of
an orange, but extremely delicate and thin, folded one over the other,
the lowest branches sweeping to the ground till the whole tree forms a
natural bower, which is proof against a tropical shower. The fragrance
attracts moths and flies; not mosquitoes, who prefer a ranker
atmosphere. I saw a pair of butterflies the match of which I do not
remember even in any museum, dark blue shot with green like a peacock's
neck, and the size of English bats. I asked a black boy to catch me one.
"That sort no let catchee, massa," he said; and I was penitently glad to
hear it.

Among the wonders of the garden are the vines, as they call them, that
is, the creepers of various kinds that climb about the other trees.
Standing in an open space there was what once had been a mighty "cedar."
It was now dead, only the trunk and dead branches remaining, and had
been murdered by a "fig-vine" which had started from the root, twined
itself like a python round the stem, strangled out the natural life, and
spreading out in all directions, had covered boughs and twigs with a
foliage not its own. So far the "vine" had done no worse than ivy does
at home, but there was one feature about it which puzzled me altogether.
The lowest of the original branches of the cedar were about twenty feet
above our heads. From these in four or five places the parasite had let
fall shoots, perhaps an inch in diameter, which descended to within a
foot of the ground and then suddenly, without touching that or anything,
formed a bight like a rope, went straight up again, caught hold of the
branch from which they started, and so hung suspended exactly as an
ordinary swing.

In three distinctly perfect instances the "vine" had executed this
singular evolution, while at the extremity of one of the longest and
tallest branches high up in the air it had made a clean leap of fifteen
feet without visible help and had caught hold of another tree adjoining
on the same level. These performances were so inexplicable that I
conceived that they must have been a freak of the gardener's. I was
mistaken. He said that at particular times in the year the fig-vine
threw out fine tendrils which hung d