u] FEATURES OF ENVIRONMENT 21 



and no grass. The ground is dark, covered with 

 many inches of rotting leaves and twigs, all turning 

 into a steaming mould. From our standpoint below 

 the canopy, the leaves, branches and even bright- 

 coloured birds, look black, and this is still more the 

 case where, by contrast, these objects are seen through 

 a rift against the glaring sky. Many of the tree-stems 

 are entwined by the twisted rope-like stems of lianas, 

 long strands looking like rusty and frayed out wire- 

 cables, ugly in shape, without branch or leaf, until 

 they reach the crowns of the trees, where they inter- 

 mingle with the other verdure and creep across the 

 tree-tops, perhaps for hundreds of feet. Many a liana 

 has strangled its support, which has rotted away, 

 and the creeper, now anchored in the ground, ascends 

 straight through mid-air and there vanishes. Many 

 of them are vines ; where these are not indigenous 

 one or other of the numerous Bignonias or plants of 

 some other family undergo the same modification. 



Wherever there is a break, where a tree has 

 crashed down, the other trees are covered with masses 

 of climbing arums. Philodendrons send down their 

 wire-like air-roots until these are anchored in the 

 ground ; the blooms, large scrolls of white, yellow, or 

 red, are visible from afar ; the supporting stem is 

 covered with a network of the climbers, which acting 

 as receptacles for the collection of mould, become 

 hotbeds for Selaginellas, ferns, lichens and a host of 



