The Tamarind tree[1], and especially its fine roots, produce a variegated cabinet wood of much beauty, but of such extreme hardness as scarcely to be workable by any ordinary tool.[2]
[Footnote 2: The natives of Western India have a belief that the shade of the tamarind tree is unhealthy, if not poisonous. But in Ceylon it is an object of the people, especially in the north of the island, to build their houses under it, from the conviction that of all trees its _shade is the coolest_. In this feeling, too, the Europeans are so far disposed to concur that it has been suggested whether there may not be something peculiar in the respiration of its leaves. The Singhalese have an idea that the twigs of the ranna-wara (_Cassia auriculata_) diffuse an agreeable coolness, and they pull them for the sake of enjoying it by holding them in their hands or applied to the head. In the south of Ceylon it is called the Matura tea-tree, its leaves being infused as a substitute for tea.]
As to fruit trees, it is only on the coast, or near the large villages and towns, that they are found in any perfection. In the deepest jungle the sight of a single coco-nut towering above the other foliage is in Ceylon a never-failing landmark to intimate to a traveller his approach to a village. The natives have a superstition that the coco-nut will not grow _out of the sound of the human voice_, and will die if the village where it had previously thriven become deserted; the solution of the mystery being in all probability the superior care and manuring which it receives in such localities.[1] In the generality of the forest hamlets there are always to be found a few venerable Tamarind trees of patriarchal proportions, the ubiquitous Jak, with its huge fruits, weighing from 5 to 50 lbs. (the largest eatable fruit in the world), each springing from the rugged surface of the bark, and suspended by a powerful stalk, which attaches it to the trunk of the tree. Lime-trees, Oranges, and Shaddoks are carefully cultivated in these little gardens, and occasionally the Rose-apple and the Cachu-nut, the Pappaya, and invariably as plentiful a supply of Plantains as they find it prudent to raise without inviting the visits of the wild elephants, with whom they are especial favourites.