The New Student's Reference Work/Banyan

Ban′yan or Banian, a tree of India and tropical Africa, remarkable for the great branches which it sends down to the earth, and which take root again, forming new trunks. In this way the tree spreads over a great surface and lasts for many ages, though the original trunk may decay. One has been described as having 350 trunks as large as oak trees and more tnan 3,000 smaller ones. It grows from seventy to a hundred feet high. Alexander Campbell is said to have once sheltered 7,000 men under a banyan. Great numbers of birds and monkeys live in the tree and eat its fruit,mdash;a kind of fig. The Brahmans hold the tree in great reverence.