Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/358

310 these are the palmyra and the cocoanut. To take these away would greatly diminish both the beauty and wealth of Southern India; for whole castes are entirely dependent upon them for their support. The cocoanut-palm is one of the most beautiful as well as one of the most useful of this beautiful and useful tribe of plants. Its shaft-like trunk towers forty, sixty, or eighty feet into the air; sometimes quite straight, at others bending and curved; and is surmounted by a rich crown of leaves, which wave in the air with all the grace of gigantic ostrich plumes. The leaves are each about fifteen feet in length, and to the number of twelve or fifteen spring from the summit of the trunk. They are pinnate, or divided into leaflets, attached to a strong midrib; the leaflets are highly polished and of a deep-green colour. The entire tree, when grouped in topes or scattered singly amid other objects, enriches every landscape in which it forms a part, and never ceases to charm the eye. Those who have dwelt amid cocoanut groves, when far away in colder climes long once more to look upon their graceful foliage, glittering in the bright sunlight or reflecting the rays of the moon in the soft night air of India.