I once saw one of these dwarfed cherry trees. It was a foot high and had a trunk about as thick as a lead pencil. The leaves were as small as those of the clipped box plants which bordered the flower-beds in my grandmother’s garden. There were perhaps twenty or thirty small, red cherries upon it; but the cherries were large in proportion to the tree. This is a curiosity merely, and artificial; we admit it for the sake of contrast, and pass it by for a mighty tree that stands next,--bo, the “god tree” from Ceylon. The bo tree is famous for its long life and the reverence paid to it by its Ceylonese worshippers. Perhaps it was the vigor and stately beauty of the bo tree which suggested to the Ceylonese that it was either divine, or the especial dwelling-place of a divinity. Alone the bo tree stood, and for two thousand years had been the idol of tree-worshippers. In 1887 a tremendous storm swept the island of Ceylon and prostrated the ancient idol tree. The fragments were gathered by the people and cremated with all the pomp awarded to dead kings. The next specimen in our wonder grove comes from Africa, the famous and beneficent rain tree. This is a tall and beautiful tree, with widely spreading branches, gifted with the astonishing power of extracting water out of apparently the driest soil and atmosphere. While the earth seems absolutely parched, and the air is like the breath of a furnace, the blessed rain tree draws from somewhere abundant moisture, which it distills in a heavy shower from its leaves, saturating all the earth beneath. What could be more grateful to a hot and thirsty traveller than this tree, bringing moisture from the very air of the burning desert? Closely allied to the African rain tree is our next tree, brought to our grove from Ferro, the smallest island of the Canary group. This island is so dry that scarcely a rivulet or spring is found there, but on its rocks grows a tree with narrow leaves that are green all the year. A constant dewy cloud surrounds this tree, and is condensed, dripping from the leaf points like the swift patter of a summer shower. Under the branches the natives place cisterns and great jars, which are kept always full by the copious supply provided by these trees.[61]