31st.—After dinner yesterday, the conversation turned on the importance of the palm tribe in their native countries to the inhabitants. Sago, cocoa-nuts, dates, oil, and various other articles of excellent food which they produce, were all discussed; and each of us mentioned some of the many uses to which the stems, the leaves, and the fibrous parts were applied. Miss Perceval afterwards endeavoured to explain the botanic distinctions between palms and tree-ferns, which have so many points of resemblance in their mode of growth: but my aunt suggested, that her description would be much more interesting if we were looking at the plants; and she kindly proposed another expedition to those magnificent stoves of Lord S. that we had seen with so much pleasure last autumn.
Miss P. approved of this arrangement, and she has been exceedingly gratified to-day with all she saw; but none seemed to be more delighted with our visit than the old gardener. He perceived how well she could appreciate his difficulties and his success; and he listened with the greatest attention to all her remarks. Miss P., however, did not forget the circumstance that led to our visit, and she shewed us in several different palms, that the scales of the foot-stalks completely sheath the stem; and that after the decay of the leaf they form an entire ring, which has a very different appearance from the separate marks or cicatrices left by the fronds of the fern.
She had never seen so fine a collection of palms in this country; and she told us many circumstances of their history and habits. She made us observe, that in the leaves the fibres run parallel to the edges. There are two grand forms to which the leaves may all be referred; pinnated, as in the cocoa and date; and fan-shaped, as in the dwarf and fan-palms. In the dwarf which we examined, the breadth of the leaf is considerable, but from the direction of the fibres, and the manner in which it is folded, previous to developement, it may rather be regarded as composed of several leaves.
The flowers of palms are even more numerous than I thought, though I remember, at Rio, trying in vain to count those of the alfonsia amygdalina—it would have been a hopeless work, for Miss P. says one spathe sometimes contains sixty thousand.
Some palms are gregarious, forming large woods, and naturally spreading over whole districts; as the dwarf palm does in the South of Europe. She says, that the different species are never much intermixed; though their districts are small, they are generally distinct from each other. It is remarkable, that no palm of the old world is found in America, except the cocoa-nut and the oil-palm of the coast of Guinea; and that there is but one species common to Asia and Africa. The palms of New Holland, also, are peculiar to that country; and I believe that she said, those of the Mauritius only occur in those islands. The cocoa, the date, and the sago palms, are the most widely distributed; but the true home of the palms is the torrid zone; for, of 110 well known species, only twelve are found outside the tropics.
I asked Miss P. whether the leaves which are found lining the tea-chests, belong to a palm. Certainly not, she said, nor to any of the cane families, as is evident from the want of a mid-rib; it is generally believed that they belong to some of the grass tribes, and indeed very closely resemble the broad-leaved pharus.
My uncle pointed out to her several large and flourishing plants of the ficus elastica, or caoutchouc tree. They have succeeded so well for the last two years in a stove kept at a very low temperature, that some of them are now removed to the green-house, and even one or two are put out of doors. As we drove home, I asked my uncle at what time caoutchouc, or Indian rubber, was brought to this country.
“It appears,” said he, “to have been first introduced into Europe, about the middle of the last century; and is, I am sure you know, procured from two other South American plants, as well as from the ficus; I mean the hævea and the jatropha. The juice, which is obtained by an incision in the bark, is made to spread itself in successive layers, over clay moulded into the form of a bottle, and when sufficiently thick, it is hung over the smoke of burning wood, which hardens, and gives it a dark colour: the clay is afterwards crumbled and thrown out. It is fabricated, by the inhabitants of its native country, into vessels to contain water and other liquids; and it is in some places used by the fishermen for torches.
“Caoutchouc is also procured from a climbing plant, urceola, a native of Sumatra. If one of its thick old stems be cut, a white juice, like cream, oozes out; by exposure to the air, a decomposition takes place, and while part of it concretes, a thin whitish juice is separated. Cloth well covered with this juice, becomes impervious to water; and the pieces so prepared are easily joined together by applying fresh juice to the edges.”
I asked my uncle, on our road home, if it was by means of that juice that the water-proof cloth, which he had seen in London, was prepared.