A
REMARKABLE
VINE
71
catch me one. ‘ That sort no let catchee, massa,’ he said ; and I was penitently glad to hear it. Among the wonders of the gardens are the vines as they call them, that is, the creepers of various kinds that climb about the other trees. Standing in an open space there was what once had been a mighty ‘ cedar.’ It was now dead, only the trunk and dead branches remaining, and had been murdered by a ‘ fig’ vine which had started from the root, twined itself like a python round the stem, strangled out the natural life, and spreading out in all directions had covered boughs and twigs with a foliage not its own. So far the ‘ vine ’ had done no worse than ivy does at home, but there was one feature about it which puzzled me altogether. The lowest of the original branches of the cedar were about twenty feet above our heads. From these in four or five places the parasite had let fall shoots, perhaps an inch in diameter, which descended to within a foot of the ground and then suddenly, without touching that or anything, formed a bight like a rope, went straight up again, caught hold of the branch from which they started, and so hung suspended exactly as an ordinary swing. In three distinctly perfect instances the ‘ vine ’ had executed this singular evolution, while at the extremity of one of the longest and tallest branches high up in the air it had made a clean leap of fifteen feet without visible help and had caught hold of another tree adjoining on the same level. These perform ances were so inexplicable that I conceived that they must have been a freak of the gardener's. I was mistaken. He said that at particular times in the year the fig vine threw out fine tendrils which hung downwards like strings. The strongest among them would lay hold of two or three others and climb up upon them, the rest would die and drop off, while the successful one, having found support for itself above, would remain swinging in the air and thicken and prosper. The leap he explained by the wind. I retained a suspicion