The _taro_ is of a bluish-grey colour, and both in appearance and consistency resembles mottled soap. Still I rather like it. Its leaves are like those of our own arum on a large scale (it is of the same family, _Arum esculentum_). One kind grows to a gigantic size, and its huge rich green leaves stand six or seven feet above their watery bed. You may often see a few plants of this giant arum close to the door of a house, and very ornamental they are; but the object for which they were placed there is to ward off the entrance of death or devils! The leaves of the yam are like those of a convolvulus, as is also its habit of growth, each plant being trained along a tall reed. There are a great many different kinds, including one the root of which is throughout of a vivid mauve. There are also tiny banana-gardens in every little crevice of the rock, and their great glossy leaves look cool and pleasant. There are about thirty varieties grown on these isles, and some bear immense pendent bunches with from one to two hundred fruits on each. The young inner leaf, which has not unrolled itself, is like the finest silk, and when warmed over the fire becomes quite waterproof, and is used as such. It is also used to tie up little bundles of sweet, oily pudding, in which the people delight. Do you realise that a banana or plantain leaf is from three to four feet long, and from ten to fifteen inches wide? Sometimes the girls carry them as parasols, and a very attractive picture they make. There is one fruit-bearing plant here which is just like a natural umbrella—namely, the _papaw_, which carries a handsome crown of deeply indented leaves on a tall curiously diapered stem, round which hangs a cluster of green and golden fruit, useful when unripe as a vegetable, and when ripe as a fruit. I am told that the leaves have the valuable quality of making tough meat tender if it is wrapped up or cooked in them; and also that they are useful in washing, being saponaceous, so that if soaked with dirty clothes they save a considerable amount of soap. Another plant, which to you is familiar as ornamental greenhouse foliage, is the dracæna (or ti-tree, as it is called in the colonies), which here is grown for the sake of its root, which is so large as sometimes to weigh 40 lb., and which answers the purpose of sugar. It is baked and used for puddings. It tastes like liquorice. The crown of long glossy leaves is useful as fodder where cattle exist; but here it is the equivalent of so many yards of green silk, and supplies some pretty damsel with a decent petticoat. The crimson dracæna is sacred to the dead, and is constantly planted on the graves, and very beautiful is the effect thus produced; while overhead droops the mournful dull green of the _noko-noko_, or casurina-tree, which I can only describe as somewhat resembling the Weymouth pine, and which seems to sigh with every faint breath of wind that stirs its pendent foliage.