[Footnote 2:  Amongst the remarkable plants of Ceylon, there is one concerning which a singular error has been perpetuated in botanical works from the time of Paul Hermann, who first described it in 1687, to the present.  I mean the kiri-anguna (Gymnema lactiferum), evidently a form of the G. sylvestre, to which has been given the name of the Ceylon cow-tree; and it is asserted that the natives drink its juice as we do milk.  LOUDON (Ency. of Plants, p. 197) says, “The milk of the G. lactiferum is used instead of the vaccine ichor, and the leaves are employed in sauces in the room of cream.”  And LINDLEY, in his Vegetable Kingdom, in speaking of the Asclepiads, says, “the cow plant of Ceylon, ‘kiri-anguna,’ yields a milk of which the Singhalese make use for food; and its leaves are also used when boiled.”  Even in the English Cyclopaedia of CHARLES KNIGHT, published so lately as 1854, this error is repeated. (See art.  Cow-tree, p. 178.) But this in altogether a mistake;—­the Ceylon plant, like many others, has acquired its epithet of kiri, not from the juices being susceptible of being used as a substitute for milk, but simply from its resemblance to it in colour and consistency.  It is a creeper, found on the southern and western coasts, and used medicinally by the natives, but never as an article of food.  The leaves, when chopped and boiled, are administered to nurses by native practitioners, and are supposed to increase the secretion of milk.  As to its use, as stated by London, in lieu of the vaccine matter, it is altogether erroneous.  MOON, in his Catalogue of the Plants of Ceylon, has accidentally mentioned the kiri-anguna twice, being misled by the Pali synonym “kiri-hangula”:  they are the same plant, though he has inserted them as different, p. 21.]

But that which arrests the attention even of an indifferent passer-by is the endless variety and almost inconceivable size and luxuriance of the climbing plants and epiphytes which live upon the forest trees in every part of the island.  It is rare to see a single tree without its families of dependents of this description, and on one occasion I counted on a single prostrate stem no less than sixteen species of Capparis, Beaumontia, Bignonia, Ipomoea, and other genera, which, in its fall, it had brought along with it to the ground.  Those which are free from climbing plants have their higher branches and hollows occupied by ferns and orchids, of which latter the variety is endless in Ceylon, though the beauty of their flower is not equal to those of Brazil and other tropical countries.  In the many excursions which I made with Dr. Gardner he added numerous species to those already known, including the exquisite Saccolabium guttatum, which we came upon in the vicinity of Bintenne, but which had before been discovered in Java and the mountains of northern India.  Its large groups of lilac flowers hung in rich festoons from the branches as we rode under them, and caused us many an involuntary halt to admire and secure the plants.