WOOD-CRAFT. 41 



moisture) is at its maximum. In equatorial forests, 

 especially those of ancient standing, the bush-ropes 

 strangle, the parasites bleed, and the epiphytes hang 

 on for a living. Travellers have to hew their way 

 through the dense, dark, tough, selfish mass of 

 vegetation, just as miners have to force a passage 

 through the living rock ; but armchair travellers 

 cannot realise sufficiently vividly the actual state of 

 things. Still, even in our own mother-country, we 

 are not without numerous members of the British 

 flora which live by the same devices as their tropical 

 brethren. Not a few of them have had their habits 

 ingeniously directed to serve our own purposes ; but 

 there are few people who train the Honeysuckle, Ivy, 

 Virginia Creeper, and Clematis to grow on the walls 

 of their houses, who are aware of the numerous 

 biological and ohysiographical circumstances, ex- 

 tending and accumulating during geological ages, 

 which have enabled these plants to serve such aesthetic 

 ends ! 



To the sympathetic botanist there is something 

 touching in the manner with which certain plants 

 accept their fate. The gorgeous -flowered Rhodo- 

 dendrons of the Himalayas have been trained by 

 long aeons to be able to exist under umbrageous 

 arboreal foliage, and we have introduced them into 

 our shrubberies because of this (to us) "valuable 

 habit." Most of the shrubs and plants we utilise 

 in our gardens on account of their growing in the 



