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BOTANY.
in Antigua, the white and the red. The white is a very beautiful tree, clothed with a dark-green glossy foliage, from whence spring flowers of a trumpet-like shape, and of the most delicate pink or pearly white. It forms a very beautiful avenue to a gentleman's seat, as well as a road-side border ; but the timber is not of so much value as the red cedar, which is another most lovely forest-tree, rising sometimes to from sixty to seventy feet, and of proportionate circumference. The foliage is very thick, the leaves in form like the English ash ; the flowers (which have not the beauty of its sister tree) are succeeded by oval berries of a purplish colour. The wood of the cedar is too well known to need much description. It is of a reddish colour and of a fragrant smell, and is almost incorruptible, as no worms will breed in it. It has been related that cedar-wood was found in the temple of Apollo at Utica, full 2000 years old. SILK-COTTON TREE, bombax seva, or Ceiba, of the polyandria order, class monodelphia, is one of the most beautiful forest-trees of the western world, and a great ornament in tropic scenery. The trunk rises smooth and straight as a column, to the height of sixty or seventy feet, and of immense circumference. It is said to have originally been brought from Africa to the West Indies, where it now flourishes in splendid magnificence. The leaves are broad, and of a glossy green, the flowers of a delicate primrose, and campanulated ; the corolla is quinquefid, from whence rises the pointai, which afterwards turns to a pod of about four or five inches in length, containing the seeds, and a profusion of bright beautiful silk. From its extreme shortness, it has been for a long time held as unfit for any use ; but within these last few years, it is discovered it can be manufactured into hats. The East Indians use it for stuffings to their ottomans, cushions, and sofas, on which they recline during the heat of the day; but the West Indians, less effeminate and luxurious, allow it to float about in its native copses unheeded, except by the pretty little hummingbird, which sometimes builds her fairy nest from its silky fabric.