[Footnote 1:  Guilandina Bonduc.]

One other curious climber is remarkable for the vigour and vitality of its vegetation, a faculty in which it equals, if it do not surpass, the banyan.  This is the Cocculus cordifolius, the “rasa-kindu” of the Singhalese, a medicinal plant which produces the guluncha of Bengal.  It is largely cultivated in Ceylon, and when it has acquired the diameter of half an inch, it is not unusual for the natives to cut from the main stem a portion of from twenty to thirty feet in length, leaving the dissevered plant suspended from the branches of the tree which sustained it.  The amputation naturally serves for a time to check its growth, but presently small rootlets, not thicker than a pack-thread, are seen shooting downwards from the wounded end; these swing in the wind till, reaching the ground, they attach themselves in the soil, and form new stems, which in turn, when sufficiently grown, are cut away and replaced by a subsequent growth.  Such is its tenacity of life, that when the Singhalese wish to grow the rasa-kindu, they twist several yards of the stem into a coil of six or eight inches in diameter, and simply hang it on the branch of a tree, where it speedily puts forth its large heart-shaped leaves, and sends down its rootlets to the earth.

The ground too has its creepers, and some of them very curious.  The most remarkable are the ratans, belonging to the Calamus genus of palms.  Of these I have seen a specimen 250 feet long and an inch in diameter, without a single irregularity, and no appearance of foliage other than the bunch of feathery leaves at the extremity.

The strength of these slender plants is so extreme, that the natives employ them with striking success in the formation of bridges across the water-courses and ravines.  One which crossed the falls of the Mahawelliganga, in the Kotmahe range of hills, was constructed with the scientific precision of an engineer’s work.  It was entirely composed of the plant, called by the natives the “Waywel,” its extremities fastened to living trees, on the opposite sides of the ravine through which a furious and otherwise impassable mountain torrent thundered and fell from rock to rock with a descent of nearly 100 feet.  The flooring of this aerial bridge consisted of short splints of wood, laid transversely, and bound in their places by thin strips of the waywel itself.  The whole structure vibrated and swayed with fearful ease, but the coolies traversed it though heavily laden; and the European, between whose estate and the high road it lay, rode over it daily without dismounting.

Another class of trees which excites the astonishment of an European, are those whose stems are protected, as high as cattle can reach, by thorns, which in the jungle attain a growth and size quite surprising.  One species of palm[1], the Caryota horrida, often rises to a height of fifty feet, and has a coating of thorns for about six or eight feet from the ground, each about an inch in length, and so densely covering the stem that the bark is barely visible.