I have already remarked, in another work,[OG] that Onesicritus and other companions of the great Macedonian, make no mention of high arborescent ferns, although they speak of the fan-leaved umbrella palms and of the tender evergreen verdure of the banana-plantations. Among the Sanscrit names given by Amarasinha for the Banana (the _Musa_ of botanists) we find _bhanu-phala_ (sun-fruit), _varana-buscha_, and _moko_. Phala signifies fruit generally. Lassen explains Pliny’s words (xii. 6), “Arbori nomen palæ, pomo arienæ,” to this effect, that “The Roman mistook the word _pala_, fruit, for the name of the tree, whilst _varana_, changed in the mouth of a Greek to _ouarana_, was transformed into _ariena_. The Arabic _mauza_, our Musa, may have been formed from _moko_. The Bhanu fruit seems to approach to Banana fruit.”[OH] Footnote 87: p. 224—“_Form of the Malvaceæ_.” Larger forms of the Mallow appear, as soon as we have crossed the Alps; _Lavatera arborea_, near Nice and in Dalmatia; and _L. olbia_, in Liguria. The dimensions of the Baobab (monkey bread-tree) have already been given. (See pp. 270–272.) With the form of the Malvaceæ are associated the botanically allied families of the Byttneriaceæ, (_Sterculia_, _Hermannia_, and the blossoms of the large-leaved _Theobroma Cacao_, whose flowers break forth from the bark of the trunk as well as from the roots); the Bombaceæ (_Adansonia_, _Helicteres_, and _Cheirostemon_); and, lastly, the Tiliaceæ (_Sparmannia Africana_). Our _Cavanillesia plantanifolia_ of Turbaco, near Carthagena in South America, and the celebrated Ochroma-like Hand-tree, the _Macpalxochiquahuitl_ of the Mexicans, (from Macpalli, the flat of the hand,) _Arbol de las manitas_ of the Spaniards, our _Cheirostemon platanoides_, are splendid representatives of the mallow form. In the last named, the anthers are connected together in such a manner as to resemble a hand or claw rising from the beautiful purplish-red blossoms. There is in all the Mexican free states only one individual remaining, one single primæval stem of this wonderful genus. It is supposed not to be indigenous, but to have been planted by a king of Toluca, about five hundred years ago. I found that the spot where the Arbol de las Manitas stands is 8825 feet above the level of the sea. Why is there only one tree of the kind? Whence did the kings of Toluca obtain the young tree or the seed? It is equally enigmatical, that Montezuma should not have possessed one of these trees in his botanical gardens of Huaxtepec, Chapoltepec, and Iztapalapan, which were used as late as by Philip the Second’s physician, Hernandez, and of which gardens traces still remain; and it appears no less striking that the Hand-tree should not have found a place among the drawings of subjects connected with natural history, which Nezahual Coyotl, king of Tezcuco, caused to be made, half a