a few small arms at the top, which are covered with large leaves.
This plant, in proportion to its size, grows as close as corn in a
field, and forms a dense jungle most difficult to penetrate. When the
jungles are in this state, the elk is at a disadvantage, as the immense
exertion required to break his way through this mass soon fatigues him,
and forces him to come to bay.

Every seven years this 'nillho' blossoms. The jungles are then neither
more nor less than vast bouquets of bright purple and white flowers; the
perfume is delicious, and swarms of bees migrate from other countries
to make their harvest of honey. The quantity collected is extraordinary.
The bee-hunters start from the low country, and spend weeks in the
jungle in collecting the honey and wax. When looking over an immense
tract of forest from some elevated point, the thin blue lines of
smoke may be seen rising in many directions, marking the sites of the
bee-hunters fires. Their method of taking the honey is simple enough.
The bees' nests hang from the boughs of the trees, and a man ascends
with a torch of green leaves, which creates a dense smoke. He approaches
the nest and smokes off the swarm, which, on quitting the exterior of
the comb, exposes a beautiful circular mass of honey and wax, generally
about eighteen inches in diameter and six inches thick. The bee-hunter
being provided with vessels formed from the rind of the gourd attached
to ropes, now cuts up the comb and fills his chatties, lowering them
down to his companions below.

When the blossom of the nillho fades, the seed forms; this is a sweet
little kernel, with the flavour of a nut. The bees now leave the
country, and the jungles suddenly swarm, as though by magic, with
pigeons, jungle-fowl, and rats. At length the seed is shed and the
nillho dies.

The jungles then have a curious appearance. The underwood being dead,
the forest-trees rise from a mass of dry sticks like thin hop-poles.
The roots of these plants very soon decay, and a few weeks of high wind,
howling through the forest, levels the whole mass, leaving the trees
standing free from underwood. The appearance of the ground can now be
imagined-a perfect chaos of dead sticks and poles, piled one on the
other, in every direction, to a depth of between two and three feet.
It can only be compared to a mass of hurdles being laid in a heap. The
young nillho grows rapidly through this, concealing the mass of dead
sticks beneath, a