Indian trees, however, it must be said, are, from all accounts, much more worthy of the honours of superstition than those of less fervid climes. A traveller mentions an instance of the 'sentient principle' occurring among the denizens of an Indian forest. Two trees, he tells us, of different kinds, although only three feet apart, had grown to the height of fifty or sixty feet, when one of them took the liberty of throwing out a low branch in such a way as to touch the trunk of his neighbour, and thus occasion much pain and irritation. 'On this the afflicted tree in turn threw out a huge excrescence, which not only enveloped the offending branch, but strangled it so completely as to destroy it utterly; the ends of the deadened boughs projecting three or four feet beyond the excrescence, while the latter was carried on a distance of three feet across to the shaft of the tree, so as to render all chances of its future movement wholly impossible!' This appears to our traveller to display as much forethought and sagacity as taking up an artery for aneurism, or tying splints round a broken bone. But in a country where trees are the objects of such veneration, and where those that are neither holy nor sagacious are admitted without scruple to the best arborical society, how comes it that the beautiful, the umbrageous, and the beneficent tamarind is looked upon as the outlaw of the plantation, the pariah of the forest? This is a very puzzling circumstance, and one that, in the present state of our knowledge, we can only set down to the caprice and ingratitude of man. TRACINGS OF THE NORTH OF EUROPE. CHRISTIANIA TO LAURGAARD. A land journey of 334 English miles, which usually occupies five or six days, was now before me. The road passes along one of the finest as well as most extensive valleys in Norway, and is further distinguished by crossing the celebrated range of mountains called the Dovre Field [Dovre pronounced _Dovra_], which may be called the backbone of the country, as the Grampian range is that of the Scottish Highlands. Along this road, as usual, there is a series of stations, but none of them is of so high a character as to present the luxury of wheaten bread. One of my duties, therefore, on the last day of my stay in Christiania, was to obtain a bag of biscuits for use on the way. Being anxious to secure a passage in a steamer which was to leave Trondheim on the 18th July, I allowed seven days for the journey, and started at one o'clock on the 11th, thus allowing an extra day for any accidental delay upon the road.