The facility with which the seeds of the fig-tree take root where there is a sufficiency of moisture to permit of germination, has rendered them formidable assailants of the ancient monuments throughout Ceylon.  The vast mounds of brickwork which constitute the remains of the Dagobas at Anarajapoora and Pollanarrua are covered densely with trees, among which the figs are always conspicuous.  One, which has fixed itself on the walls of a ruined edifice at the latter city, forms one of the most remarkable objects of the place—­its roots streaming downwards over the walls as if their wood had once been fluid, follow every sinuosity of the building and terraces till they reach the earth.

[Illustration:  A FIG TREE ON THE RUINS OF POLLANARRUA.]

To this genus belongs the Sacred Bo-tree of the Buddhists, Ficus religiosa, which is planted close to every temple, and attracts almost as much veneration as the statue of the god himself.  At Anarajapoora is still preserved the identical tree said to have been planted 288 years before the Christian era.[1]

[Footnote 1:  For a memoir of this celebrated tree, see the account of Anarajapoora, Vol.  II. p. 10.]

Although the India-rubber tree (F. elastica) is not indigenous to Ceylon, it is now very widely diffused over the island.  It is remarkable for the pink leathery covering which envelopes the leaves before expansion, and for the delicate tracing of the nerves which run in equi-distant rows at right angles from the mid-rib.  But its most striking feature is the exposure of its roots, masses of which appear above ground, extending on all sides from the base, and writhing over the surface in undulations—­

  “Like snakes in wild festoon,
  In ramous wrestlings interlaced,
  A forest Laocoon."[1]

[Footnote 1:  HOOD’s poem of The Elm Tree.]

So strong, in fact, is the resemblance, that the villagers give it the name of the “Snake-tree.”  One, which grows close to Cotta, at the Church Missionary establishment within a few miles of Colombo, affords a remarkable illustration of this peculiarity.

[Illustration:  THE SNAKE-TREE.]

There is an avenue of these trees leading to the Gardens of Peradenia, the roots of which meet from either side of the road, and have so covered the surface by their agglutinated reticulations as to form a wooden framework, the interstices of which retain the materials that form the roadway.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Mr. Ferguson of the Surveyor-General’s Department, assures me that he once measured the root of a small wild fig-tree, growing in a patena at Hewahette, and found it upwards of 140 feet in length, whilst the tree itself was not 30 feet high.]

The Kumbuk of the Singhalese (called by the Tamils Maratha-maram)[1] is one of the noblest and most widely distributed trees in the island; it delights in the banks of rivers and moist borders of tanks and canals; it overshadows the stream of the Mahawelli-ganga, almost from Kandy to the sea; and it stretches its great arms above the still water of the lakes on the eastern side of the island.