"The peculiar growth of the banyan," continued Miss Harson, "renders it an object of beauty and produces those column-like stems that cause it to become a grove in itself. It may be said to grow, not from the seed, but from the branches. They spread out horizontally, and each branch sends out a number of rootlets that at first hang from it like slender cords and wave about in the wind.--Those are your 'snakes,' Edith.--But by degrees they reach the ground and root themselves into it; then the cord tightens and thickens and becomes a stem, acting like a prop to the widespreading branch of the parent plant. Indeed, column on column is added in this manner, the books tell us, so long as the mother-tree can support its numerous progeny."