Doctor Bronson had a letter of introduction to Mr. Walker, a merchant of Kandy, and delivered it on the morning after their arrival. He was cordially welcomed by that gentleman, and invited to visit the botanical gardens as a preliminary to breakfast, and also to take the two youths on the excursion. The botanical gardens are some two miles or more from the town, and there is a good road thither which forms a pleasant drive. On the way to the gardens Mr. Walker told the strangers something about the place they were about to visit. He said the Botanic Garden of Ceylon was first established near Colombo, in 1799, but the locality proved unsuitable, and it was moved to two or three places in succession, and finally came to Kandy about sixty years ago. It had been carefully kept, and the expenditures for it had resulted in the creation of one of the finest open-air gardens in the world. [Illustration: YOUNG PALMS IN THE BOTANIC GARDEN.] While he was giving them some of the details concerning it they arrived at the entrance, and passed within the gates. Magnificent collections of palms of different kinds, bamboos with trunks a foot in diameter, and growing in great clusters, as though a dozen of them came from a single root, green and flowering plants almost without number, nutmeg and cinnamon trees, tea and coffee plants, and hundreds of other botanical curiosities were passed in rapid succession. Mr. Walker called attention to the palms for which Ceylon is celebrated, and described their peculiarities. "You doubtless know all about the cocoa-nut palm," said he, "as you have just come from the sea-coast where it flourishes, but the Palmyra palm may be new to you. It is to the north of Ceylon what the cocoa-nut palm is to the south, as it furnishes food, clothing, and shelter to the inhabitants." One of the boys asked if it bore the same kind of fruit as the trees of the sea-coast. "There is a resemblance between the products of the two trees," was the reply, "but they are not the same. The Palmyra grows to seventy or eighty feet high, and the stem is nearly always straight, and ends in a tuft of fan-shaped leaves, with clusters of fruit as large as a cocoa-nut, but rounder. There are six or seven of these clusters, with ten to twenty fruit in a cluster, and each fruit contains three seeds or kernels filled with a white pulp that is eaten fresh, or can be dried and kept for any length of time. If the kernels are planted, they throw off sprouts the size of parsnips; these sprouts can be eaten fresh, or dried in the sun, and the natives make various dishes from them, and also an excellent farina which forms the food of a great many people.