I don't know how to introduce you to some of the
things which delight my eyes here; but I must ask you to believe
that the specimens of tropical growths which we see in
conservatories at home are in general either misrepresentations, or
very feeble representations of these growths in their natural homes.
I don't allude to flowers, and especially not to orchids, but in
this instance very specially to bananas, coco-palms, and the
pandanus. For example, there is a specimen of the Pandanus
odoratissimus in the palm-house in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens,
which is certainly a malignant caricature, with its long straggling
branches, and widely scattered tufts of poverty stricken foliage.
The bananas and plantains in that same palm-house represent only the
feeblest and poorest of their tribe. They require not only warmth
and moisture, but the generous sunshine of the tropics for their
development. In the same house the date and sugar-palms are
tolerable specimens, but the cocoa-nut trees are most truly "palms
in exile."
I suppose that few people ever forget the first sight of a palm-tree
of any species. I vividly remember seeing one for the first time at
Malaga, but the coco-palm groves of the Pacific have a strangeness
and witchery of their own.
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