Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/357

309 and feeling associated with the earliest dreams of oriental life and scenery. Well do they deserve, both from their beauty and utility, the position they hold as the most famous of the trees of the field.

Palm-trees, though of many varying species, have all some general characteristics. All palms have a trunk, growing often to a stately height, surmounted by a crown, not of branches, but of leaves; these leaves are either fan-like, or divided like the plume of the ostrich into leaflets springing from a strong leaf-stalk.

But, while thus possessing common traits, the different tribes present striking diversities. Some, like the rattan, climb to the summits of trees in the dense forests, and, serpent-like, growing from tree-top to tree-top, throw up their leafy heads above their topmost branches. Others are but a cluster of palm-leaves springing from a concealed trunk. In some, the shaft is most slender near the summit; in others, at a point midway from the root to the leaves; in others, again, its diameter will not vary perceptibly from the root to the leafy top.

A number of these different members of the palm-family are found in India, but among them two stand pre-eminent for frequency and utility;