[Footnote 1: The vegetable poisons, the use of which is ascribed to the Singhalese, are chiefly the seeds of the _Datura_, which act as a powerful narcotic, and those of the _Croton tiglium_, the excessive effect of which ends in death. The root of the _Nerium odorum_ is equally fatal, as is likewise the exquisitely beautiful _Gloriosa superba_, whose brilliant flowers festoon the jungle in the plains of the low country. See Bennett's account of the _Antiaris_, in HORSFIELD'S _Plantæ Javanicæ_.]
[Footnote 2: Catalogue of Bombay Plants, p. 193. The process in Ceylon is thus described in Sir W. HOOKER'S _Report on the Vegetable Products_ exhibited in Paris in 1855: "The trees chosen for the purpose measure above a foot in diameter. The felled trunks are cut into lengths, and the bark is well beaten with a stone or a club till the parenchymatous part comes off, leaving only the inner bark attached to the wood; which is thus easily drawn out by the hand. The bark thus obtained is fibrous and tough, resembling a woven fabric: it is sewn at one end into a sack, which is filled with sand, and dried in the sun."]
As we descend the hills the banyans[1] and a variety of figs make their appearance. They are the Thugs of the vegetable world, for although not necessarily epiphytic, it may be said that in point of fact no single plant comes to perfection, or acquires even partial development, without the destruction of some other on which to fix itself as its supporter. The family generally make their first appearance as slender roots hanging from the crown or trunk of some other tree, generally a palm, among the moist bases of whose leaves the seed carried thither by some bird which had fed upon the fig, begins to germinate. This root branching as it descends, envelopes the trunk of the supporting tree with a network of wood, and at length penetrating the ground, attains the dimensions of a stem. But unlike a _stem_ it throws out no buds, leaves, or flowers; the true stem, with its branches, its foliage, and fruit, springs upwards from the crown of the tree whence the root is seen descending; and from it issue the pendulous rootlets, which, on reaching the earth, fix themselves firmly and form the marvellous growth for which the banyan is so celebrated.[2] In the depth of this grove, the original tree is incarcerated till, literally strangled by the folds and weight of its resistless companion, it dies and leaves the fig in undisturbed possession of its place. It is not unusual in the forest to find a fig-tree which had been thus upborne till it became a standard, now forming a hollow cylinder, the centre of which was once filled by the sustaining tree: but the empty walls form a circular network of interlaced roots and branches; firmly agglutinated under pressure, and admitting the light through interstices that look like loopholes in a turret.