'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From December 1854 to March 1856. (New Issue.) Edited by the Secretary. Volume XII.' [‎58] (75/258)

Iviii
PROCEEDINGS OP THE SOCIETY.
the ruptured wood had at no time showed any signs of healing ; and when my
favourite is many years hence cut down, it will be found to have a great black
crack near the core out to the eighth ring, from which an envelope of solid
wood will surround the whole. The bark is now (10th September) extending
itself slowly over the pulp-wood sheathe promising to cover the wound : every
now and then it is infested with white ants, which I carefully remove, cutting
away the decayed bark, and scarifying it to the quick, so as to stimulate re
generation. The healing process pursued by the branches was the same as
that just described for the trunk. The tree yielded in its convalescent state in
June 1855 forty mangoes—about a sixth of what it ought to have given; by next
season it will I trust be completely cured. The mango is remarkable for the
thickness and juciness of its bark, and thence the great facility with which it
may be grafted, and the celerity with which injuries in its trunk or cicatrices in
branches lopped off, are covered over and healed. I had two mangoes which
gave profusion of flowers, and brought their fruit almost to maturity—one of
these died in April, and was found rotten from the roots upwards ; the other
seemed on the point of demise when the rains of June restored it, and it has
now all the appearance of a healthy and vigorous tree. Several died a month
or two after the gale : all these seemed to have had the tap root injured—some
of the trees are now in flower four months before their time. I have given
what occurred under my own immediate observation, as furnishing probably a
very fair type of the whole of our mango orchards.
The Acacia fistula, and the Poinciana data (Bengal Gold Mohur,) our
two finest flowering trees, were affected pretty much alike. They
blossom in April and May—the second losing its leaves just before its flowers
appear, at which time its branches are naked. The P. data is remarkable
for the rapidity of its growth. Two of these in my garden were seedlings of
1848, and planted out on the 18th June that year, about a foot in length, and
an inch in circumference. Just before the humcane the bole was nine feet in
length, and forty-three inches in circumference, or fourteen and a half inches
in diameter half-way up. It had a spread in all directions of fifty feet nearly,
its shadow occupying an area of 1,506 square feet. These were stripped of at
least two-thirds of their branches, and presented the most unhappy aspect of
all our trees. Though their habit is to lose their leaves in February or March
and get into magnificent blossom, the flowers dropping off and the twigs
shooting out in great luxuriance in June, those much injured by the storm
burst out immediately into leaf, and so continued all the season round, refus
ing to flower and expending all their energies in recovering their strength
as trees. In the end of August when full in leaf, they become covered
with flowers,—an anomaly in their history ; while the few that were in
sheltered spots, and hardly at all suffered, pursued their usual course.
The India Rubber tree (Jatropha Elastica), though found in most of our
gardens, is an exotic in Hindustan. Its roots have such strength and so great
a spread that few ot the trees were overthrown, though many of them were
nearly stripped of branches : most of them were so contorted and twisted
about as apparently to loosen or partially detach the bark from the wood,
though this only became apparent some time afterwards. During the rains
the damaged bark began to blacken and detach itself. Around its margins,
along a very considerable portion of the stem, the tree had begun to re-bark it-
self in the ordinary manner. Where the spaces were too large, or the vital
energies inadequate, lor this, a thick, black, spongy, leathery mass of the