Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/588

582 literature can not but be struck with the fact that in these days tropical botany is becoming more and more important. The ordinary text-books still illustrate most points in physiology and morphology by reference to plants of the temperate zone, yet there is an increasing tendency to refer more often to tropical plants. The modern botanist needs to know something of the tropics—the more the better. At Buitenzorg he can learn a great deal in a short time.

The visitor, on going through the gate of the garden, enters at once a long avenue planted with canary trees (Canarium commune). Here is something with no counterpart anywhere else in the world. As one walks down Canary Avenue in early morning he notices perhaps, first the darkness, then looking up he sees the branches above, overarched, as it were, to form the vaulted roof of a Gothic cathedral. Here and there a few stray sunbeams, stealing through, make bright patches of light on the moist roadway; the lianas, climbing up the great tree trunks, are covered with dew and their huge leaves glisten as they are gently waved by the morning breeze. Their long, aerial roots sway to and fro as slow-moving pendulums. The great buttressed