Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/589

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BOTANICAL GARDEN AT BUITENZORG, JAVA.
583
Jungle Scene. A Species of Pandamus with Long Grass-like Leaves. A Plant (Zlatostenima) with Long Pointed Drip-tips.

roots of the canary trees, covered with epiphytic ferns and orchids, seem almost too picturesque to be quite natural. Everywhere the eye feasts on a wealth of green. It is hard to escape the thought that this is fairy land.

When the visitor passes onward to the lake and looks across at the wooded island where are planted magnificent flowering trees, shrubs of wonderful foliage, and, more striking than all else, the red stemmed 'sealing wax palm'—when he looks across the lotus and Victoria regia to all this tropical luxuriance he must perforce become enthusiastic, even though he be by nature the most cold-blooded of men.

The garden has an extent of about one hundred and fifty acres. Through one end of it passes the Tjilwong River and along here is some low ground, while further back is higher land with more undulating surface, where, from certain vantage points, good views may be had of the neighboring mountains. Only a few avenues are open to carriages, but there are many neatly paved foot-paths usually following a somewhat winding course. These foot-paths form the boundaries of the different sections in which are trees of the various plant families arranged in systematic and orderly fashion. To a botanist, interested in a given group of plants, this is a most useful arrangement. It is much better than the more common plan of grouping trees according to the kind of soil in which they do best, and still better than the even more usual plan of scattering them about, hit or miss, wherever there happens to be room.

A visitor to the garden who is not a botanist will be disappointed that the labels give only the scientific names of trees. He who may