38 TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



climbers, even more than all other plants, is upward 

 towards the light. In the shade of the forest they 

 rarely or never flower, and seldom even produce foliage ; 

 but when they have reached the summit of the tree that 

 supports them, they expand under the genial influence 

 of light and air, and often cover their foster-parent with 

 blossoms not its own. Here, as a rule, the climber's growth 

 would cease ; but the time comes when the supporting 

 tree rots and falls, and the creeper comes with it in torn 

 and tangled masses to the ground. But though its 

 foster-parent is dead it has itself received no permanent 

 injury, but shoots out again till it finds a fresh support, 

 mounts another tree, and again puts forth its leaves and 

 flowers. In time the old tree rots entirely away and the 

 creeper remains tangled on the ground. Sometimes 

 branches only fall and carry a portion of the creeper 

 tightly stretched to an adjoining tree ; at other times 

 the whole tree is arrested by a neighbour to which the 

 creeper soon transfers itself in order to reach the upper 

 light. When by the fall of a branch the creepers are 

 left hanging in the air, they may be blown about by the 

 wind and catch hold of trees growing up beneath them, 

 and thus become festooned from one tree to another. 

 When these accidents and changes have been again and 

 again repeated the climber may have travelled very far 

 from its parent stem, and may have mounted to the tree 

 tops and descended again to the earth several times over. 

 Only in this way does it seem possible to explain the 

 wonderfully complex manner in which these climbing 

 plants wander up and down the forest as if guided by 

 the strangest caprices, or how they become so crossed 

 and tangled together in the wildest confusion. 



