JUNGLE LIFE 81 



the lianas — those fast-growing serj^ents of the plant world 

 which lie in wait both upon the ground and upon the loftiest 

 tree-top, too weak to raise themselves unaided, seeking ever 

 for some support upon which to rest, thus ultimately to reach 

 upward to the coveted, unrestricted light and air. 



We saw how in the secondgrowth the young cecropias 

 shot upward with their single, smooth stem. Here, if a sap- 

 ling dared throw out any heavy side branch, some insidious 

 vine would be certain to curl over it, and to thicken until 

 the weight would break the branch or bring down the young- 

 tree. For the same reason there are few or no leaning or bent 

 trunks. All are straight as plummets — a dense fretting of 

 vertical lines, in size ranging from the thread so fine that 

 its source is lost in the twilight overhead, to the great trunks 

 of mora and greenheart, yards in diameter. 



For purposes of convenience in my bird work, I found 

 it necessary to divide the jungle into four horizontal zones 

 or strata ; the Floor of the Jungle, the Lower Jungle up to 

 twenty feet, the Mid- jungle as high as seventy and the Tree- 

 tops from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet above 

 the ground. The floras and faunas of these zones are as 

 distinct as is the abyssmal from the plankton, and these in 

 turn from the surface life of the ocean. Finally the air above 

 the jungle had to be taken into consideration as being the 

 principal haunt of many forms of life, just as we have sea- 

 birds and flying fish and air-breathing cetaceans in the case 

 of the pelagic simile. 



The ground in the jungle was covered with the accu- 

 mulated debris of centuries, all the immense mass of vegeta- 

 tion which reared itself on high, falling sooner or later, and 

 returning to this globigerina ooze of the dry land. Fallen 

 tree trunks lay here and there, some recent, with the swath 

 of their descent still open and raw, others with semblance 

 of wood and bark, but crumbling to mold at a touch. This 

 was the home of fungi, mosses and lichens, in shapes and 

 pigments unnumbered and unnamed. Day after day, dur- 



