branches, when they meet with any obstruction in their descent conform themselves to the shape of the resisting body, and thus occasion many curious metamorphoses.  I recollect seeing them stand in the perfect shape of a gate long after the original posts and cross piece had decayed and disappeared; and I have been told of their lining the internal circumference of a large bricked well, like the worm in a distiller’s tub; there exhibiting the view of a tree turned inside out, the branches pointing to the centre, instead of growing from it.  It is not more extraordinary in its manner of growth than whimsical and fantastic in its choice of situations.  From the side of a wall or the top of a house it seems to spring spontaneously.  Even from the smooth surface of a wooden pillar, turned and painted, I have seen it shoot forth, as if the vegetative juices of the seasoned timber had renewed their circulation and begun to produce leaves afresh.  I have seen it flourish in the centre of a hollow tree of a very different species, which however still retained its verdure, its branches encompassing those of the adventitious plant whilst its decayed trunk enclosed the stem, which was visible, at interstices, from nearly the level of the plain on which they grew.  This in truth appeared so striking a curiosity that I have often repaired to the spot to contemplate the singularity of it.  How the seed from which it is produced happens to occupy stations seemingly so unnatural is not easily determined.  Some have imagined the berries carried thither by the wind, and others, with more appearance of truth, by the birds; which, cleansing their bills where they light, or attempt to light, leave, in those places, the seeds adhering by the viscous matter which surrounds them.  However this be, the jawi-jawi, growing on buildings without earth or water, and deriving from the genial atmosphere its principle of nourishment, proves in its increasing growth highly destructive to the fabric where it is harboured; for the fibrous roots, which are at first extremely fine, penetrate common cements, and, overcoming as their size enlarges the most powerful resistance, split, with the force of the mechanic wedge, the most substantial brickwork.  When the consistence is such as not to admit the insinuation of the fibres the root extends itself along the outside, and to an extraordinary length, bearing not unfrequently to the stem the proportion of eight to one when young.  I have measured the former sixty inches, when the latter, to the extremity of the leaf, which took up a third part, was no more than eight inches.  I have also seen it wave its boughs at the apparent height of two hundred feet, of which the roots, if we may term them such, occupied at least one hundred; forming by their close combination the appearance of a venerable gothic pillar.  It stood near the plains of Krakap, but, like other monuments of antiquity, it had its period of existence, and is now no more.