ld World. Some splendid species belong also to
Australia. All of them possess, more or less, the singular habit of
throwing out roots from their branches, and forming new stems, like the
banyan; and frequently they embrace other trees in such a manner, as to
hide the trunks of the latter completely from view!

This curious spectacle was witnessed by our travellers where they had
encamped. The banyan which they had chosen as their shelter was not one
of the largest--being only a young tree, but out of its top rose the
huge fan-shaped leaves of a palm-tree of the kind known as the palmyra
palm (_Borassus flagelliformis_). No trunk of the palm-tree was
visible; and had not Karl Linden been a botanist, and known something of
the singular habit of the banyan, he would have been puzzled to account
for this odd combination. Above spread the long radiating fronds of the
palmyra directly out of the top of the trunk of the fig, and looking so
distinct from the foliage of the latter as to form a very curious sight.
The leaves of the banyan being ovate, and somewhat cordate or
heart-shaped, of course presented quite a contrast to the large stiff
fronds of the palmyra.

Now the puzzle was, how the palm got there. Naturally one would suppose
that a seed of the palm had been deposited on the top of the banyan, and
had there germinated and thrown out its fronds.

But how did the palm seed get to the top of the fig? Was it planted by
the hand of man? or carried thither by a bird? It could not well have
been by the latter mode--since the fruit of the palmyra is as large as a
child's head, and each one of the three seeds it contains as big as a
goose's egg!! No bird would be likely to carry about such a bulky thing
as that. If there were only one palm-tree growing from the top of one
banyan, it might be conjectured that some one had so planted it; but
there are many such combinations of these trees met with in the forests
of India, and also in districts entirely uninhabited. How then was this
union of the two trees to be accounted for?

Of our three travellers Caspar alone was puzzled. Not so Karl and
Ossaroo. Both were able to explain the matter, and Karl proceeded to
offer the elucidation.

"The fact is," said the botanist, "that the palm has not grown out of
the fig, but _vice versa_. The banyan is the true parasite. A bird--
wood-pigeon, or minobird, or tree-pheasant perhaps--has carried the
berries of the fig-tree