"Lena," said he, "go and kiss the mimosa."
The child did so, laughing gleefully, and came away. The plant gave no token of shrinking from contact with the pretty child!
"Now," said our host, "will you touch the plant?"
Rising to do so, we approached it with one hand extended, and before it had come fairly in contact, the nearest spray and leaves wilted visibly.
"The plant knows the child," said the doctor, "but you are a stranger."
It was a puzzling experience, which seemed to endow the mimosa with human intelligence.
One brings away especially a vivid memory of the brilliant scarlet and golden bloom which covers the flamboyer so densely as almost to hide from view its foliage of velvet green. Only in far-away, mid-ocean Hawaii does the traveler see this gorgeous tree so perfectly developed.
The former superintendent of the Royal Botanical Gardens near Kandy, whither we shall take the reader in due time, is a scientific botanist, and an enthusiast in his profession. He tells us that he classified nearly three thousand indigenous plants, which is double the flora of Great Britain, and about one tenth of all the species in the world yet described. Thirty of these are declared to be found only upon this island. If correct, this is certainly a very remarkable fact, and forms an additional incentive for exploration on the part of naturalists.
Any reader of these pages who can conveniently visit Cambridge, Mass., should not fail to enjoy the unique and comprehensive collection of specimens representing the flora of Ceylon, now in the Agassiz Museum. The material is glass, although it seems to be wax, but so perfectly has the work been done, under direction of Professor George L. Goodale, of Harvard College, as to be indeed realistic. We have called this collection unique, and it is absolutely so. Bostonians can find no more charming local attraction with which to entertain appreciative visitors from abroad than this in the department of botany at the institution named.
There is a constant unvarying aspect of green pervading the scenery of Ceylon, owing to the perennial nature of the vegetation. The trees do not shed their leaves at any fixed period of the year. The ripe and withered foliage drops off, but it is promptly replaced by new and delicate leaves, whose exquisite hues when first expanding rival the blossoms themselves in beauty of color. If fruit is plucked, a flower quickly follows and another cluster ripens,--Nature is inexhaustible. There is no winter interval or sleep for the vegetation, no period of the sere and yellow leaf, as with us in the colder north. The fruits and flowers are ever present, yet there is a certain resemblance to spring and autumn, as we are accustomed to see them. The shrubs and trees are decked more or less with young fresh leaves at all times, while the ground is strewn with those in a state of decay which have ripened and faded out of life. The latter with us are the harbingers of winter, the former coming only with the opening spring. Thus it is that we call it the reign of eternal summer, for all out-of-doors seems like a conservatory of choice flowers and birds of dazzling hues. Although these highly colored creatures of the feathered tribe, like the butterflies, are almost innumerable, one is forced to admit that there are few sweet songsters among them. Paroquets in mottled green, practicing their dainty ways, present themselves in flocks, lighting upon the nearest bushes and branches with a winning fearlessness and confidence. They will slip quietly away if one attempts to catch them, but when taken young they are easily domesticated, accommodating themselves to human associations with the utmost facility, and though they are left free to seek the woods and jungle when they choose, they are sure to return voluntarily to the cabins of the natives, to be fed and petted by human hands.