40 NAPARIMA. 



sands of years, at tlio same pace at wliich it goes on now, 

 the amount of soil removed must he very great; so great, 

 that the Naparimas may liave been, when they were first 

 uplifted out of the (Julf, hundreds of feet higher than they 

 are now. 



Another tree we went to see in the home park, of which 

 I would have gladly obtained a photograph. A Poix doux,' 

 some said it was ; others that it was a Figuier.^ I incline to 

 the former belief, as the leaves seemed to me pinnated : but 

 the doubt was pardonable enough. There was not a leaf on the 

 tree which was not nigh one hundred feet over our heads. For 

 size of spurs and wealth of parasites the tree was almost as 

 remarkable as the Ceiba 1 mentioned just now. But the 

 curiosity of the tree was a Carat-palm which had started 

 between its very roots ; had run its straight and slender stem 

 up parallel with the bole of its companion, and had then 

 pierced through the head of the tree, and all its wilderness 

 of lianes, till it spread its huge flat crown of fans among the 

 hijrhest branches, more than a hundred feet aloft. The con- 

 trast between the two forms of vegetation, each so grand, but 

 as utterly different in every line as they ai-e in botanical 

 affinities, and yet both living together in such close em- 

 brace, was very noteworthy ; a good example of the rule, 

 that while competition is most severe between forms most 

 1 Inga. ^ Ficus. 



