no THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



above them and no longer appear as dominating or physiog- 

 nomic types in the landscape; they are hardly more than 

 sporadic components of the vegetation. 



It is only when we penetrate into the interior of this great 

 forest, when we study the individual elements that compose it, 

 that we begin to be impressed with distinctive characteristics. 

 One can truly say that almost every tree of the South Ameri- 

 can primeval forest is a botanical garden of its own. Rising 

 up in supreme magnificence, the trunk hardly sending out a 

 branch before it has attained a height of 125 or 150 feet, 

 and completely overgrown with creeping and climbing plants, 

 aroids and orchids, it is wholly different from the trees of 

 the northern woods as it well can be. The tendency to spread- 

 ing umbrella-like crowns differentiates the forest components 

 of the south, as do also the giant buttressed roots which dis- 

 tinguish so many of the species. 



Alfred Russell Wallace, who has enjoyed unusual advan- 

 tages for the study of the general characteristics of tropical 

 vegetation, has emphasized as one of the marked features of 

 1he tropical forest the absence of flowers. He says, indeed, 

 that one may travel for weeks at a time along the streams 

 of the Amazon region without once realizing those aspects 

 of floral development which, whether by profusion of growth, 

 or by size and color, impress the landscape of temperate re- 

 gions. This picture does not seem to apply to the forest of the 

 river-banks of the Guianas, and its inaccuracy has been point- 

 ed out by that acute student of nature, Mr. Inturn. The 

 streamers of purple, red and white which hang down over 

 the forest curtain easily recall in profusion and wealth of color 

 the flowers of the north — the field daisy, clover, and butter- 

 cup. Indeed, it would be difficult to recall in forests of the 

 north, even as rare instances, that display of flowers which so 

 frequently repeats itself here. — From an article by Prof. An- 

 gela Hiclprin in National Geographic Magazine. 



