As I think you are more likely to blunt my axe, than cut down the tree, you may put on your jacket, and we will inspect that fallen fern I see yonder. Perhaps after you have looked at the inside, you will find another wonder. It was not long before our young Botanist uttered an exclamation of joyful surprise. I have found it out, said he. Only fancy, father, I was hammering away at a mere shell, though it was a hard one. The tree is quite soft inside, though like flint outside. It is the very opposite to every tree I ever saw before in all my life. No doubt it is; and it was to see it with your own eyes that I brought you here to the Fern tree valley. Thank you, dear father, you always like to give me a treat, and this is a rare one, too. But I am sure that such a tree as this could never grow like a vegetable Gum tree, that you were telling me all about. Can you name any plants, Willie, of which the fern tree puts you in mind? I know of none, unless it be the Bamboo, for that is hard outside and hollow within, and it seems, like this, to grow up straight about the same thickness throughout. There is another tree of this character which we have in Australia, some kinds of which grow in other countries, producing dates, of which boys are so fond. Any one can guess that:--it is the Palm. But whence have we Palms, father? There are some in Gipps’ Land, at the foot of the Australian Alps; other finer ones are at Illawarra, south of Sydney; but more northerly, in the hotter parts, Palms are very common. Is that one from which we get our Cabbage Tree Hats? It is so. The head of the Cabbage Palm is so good tasting and nourishing, that many trees were felled on purpose to get at this sort of cabbage, especially in the early days of the New South Wales Colony. Then Palms, and Bamboo, and Fern trees grow the same way, as their stems look the same, and as they have neither branches nor solid timber. But how do they grow, father? There is no new wood formed outside the last ring, as in the Gum tree. It so happens, my boy, that new layers are formed for a while, inside instead of outside. Our new class of trees are, therefore, called _Endogenous_, from their growing internally, in opposition to the ordinary forest trees, which are _Exogenous_, from growing externally. I suppose the new shoots arise from where we see the joints in the cane; but where is the fruit of our new Endogenous friend? Have you never seen the pictures of bunches of dates and other fruits all among the leafy branches at the top? Eh! that I have, with the figures of Blacks climbing up the long poles to get at the fruit. Now I have two more hard words for you to learn, to distinguish our two sorts of trees. We know them not merely by the difference of wood, but of seed. First tell me how many cotyledons or lobes are in a seed? There are two in all the seeds that ever I saw. What! was that cocoa nut the same which you bought the other day?