THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 109 



of this chocolate-brown stream at a distance of seventy miles 

 from its mouth, where the width of the stream is still from one 

 to two miles or four or five times the normal width of the Mis- 

 sissippi river the great curtain of the primeval forest hangs 

 T'irtually untouched by man. If I were asked to state briefly 

 the distinguishing characteristics of this forest, I should find it 

 difficult to frame a reply or to give to it proper perspective in 

 comparison with the forest elsewhere. The great South Amer- 

 ican primeval forest is impressive ; is imposing, but at the same 

 time it is forbidding. With the great walls of vegetation 

 rising to a height of 175 and 200 feet, with the crown of the 

 forest carried at this enormous height above the spectators, 

 and v>-ith innumerable creepers and trailers binding the whole 

 into an almost impenetrable maze, the eye that is on the ex- 

 terior has difficulty in finding points of rest or repose. But 

 little sunlight penetrates into the recesses of the interior, and 

 what there is of it comes out in scattered flecks of brilliantly 

 reflected light and not as sunlight areas. 



In its botanical relations the forest does not look particu- 

 larly tropical, if by tropical we mean an aspect of vegetation 

 which is dominated by types that one habitually associates 

 with the lower climes and whose general physiognomy differs 

 from the types of temperate regions. It is true that the 

 eye fails to note the familiar forms of the oak, the maple, 

 beech birch or poplar, but the general contour of tropical fol- 

 iage, especially where it appears lost in mass, is not very differ- 

 ent from that of these trees or of trees that in one form or 

 another make up the bulk of the north woods. Except where 

 clumps of palms stand out in particular relief, the trees of the 

 South American forest have, apart from exceeding luxur- 

 iance and magnitude of dimensions, so nearly the charac- 

 teristics of the foliage of the trees of our own region that 

 the traveler could easily misinterpret the landscape of which 

 they formed a part. Even where palms are present, they gen- 

 erally lose their crowns in the wall of vegetation that rises 



