254
BOTANY.
The germen becomes a round woody capsule, compressed at the ends like an orange, divided into twelve cells, each containing a flat oblong seed. When these capsules are ripe, they burst with a loud noise, scattering their seeds and severed cells to a great distance, and occasioning the negro, who may be passing at the time, to exclaim, " Eh ! eh ! de jumbies (ghosts) dun dere dinner hark dere plates ; how dey mash 'em !" Before these pods burst, they are sometimes plucked by the Antiguans, and after being scraped and garnished with gold paper, are made into sandboxes, (from whence this tree derives its common name,) and sent to England as presents for the curious. This tree belongs to the natural order tricoccÌ, and to the moncecia class of plants. LOGWOOD, hœmatoxylon Campechianum, grows in Antigua, but no use is made of it in the way of commerce. It rises from the height of eighteen to thirty feet. The trunk is generally uneven in its growth, with somewhat of a knotty surface ; the branches are thorny, and thickly covered with lanceolated leaves, and the flowers, five-petalled, are of a delicate pale purple and yellow. The pointai afterwards becomes a flat oblong pod, containing a few kidney-shaped seeds. Altogether it forms a very beautiful object in woodland scenery. It belongs to the decandria class of plants. CALABASH-TREE, crescentia cujete, rises to about the height of the English apple. The trunk is straight and columnar, branching off at the head into numerous long slender branches, clothed with dark green foliage. The flower is insignificant ; the pointai afterwards becomes an oblong or globular fruit, of a fine green colour, and covered with a rind, which, as it approaches to maturity, attains the hardness and stability of maple wood. The interior of the fruit is filled with a white pulpy substance containing the seeds. This the negroes scrape carefully out, and after divesting the nut of its outer green covering, dry it in the sun, and then use them as culinary articles, instead of the more brittle cups and basins of English ware. Some of these calabashes,