48 SAGACITY AND MORALITY OF PLANTS. 



strangled, and done all kinds of vegetable crimes 

 before it satisfied its own ends ! 



I have said that our thickest European tangles 

 cannot afford us the slightest idea of the similar 

 struggle for existence going on in tropical forests. 

 At home the battle is fought out only a few feet 

 above the ground — there it is going on high over- 

 head. Below, the creeping plants are gripping for 

 the tough wrestling match, and as we see them 

 twisting and writhing in and out, as Kingsley says, 

 we cannot but feel they have beaten the woody trees 

 in the battle, and that by sheer cunning. Some 

 tropical genera, like the Baiihiiiias of Brazil among 

 the Leguminosae, seem to have laid themselves out 

 purposely for climbing ; and the faculty is now in- 

 stinctive, as doubtless would be the habits of athletes 

 if a thousand generations of them were confined to 

 such a mode of life. Wallace mentions one of the 

 most extraordinary of the Baiihinias he saw in 

 the forests of the Amazons valley, which had a 

 broad flattened stem, that twisted in and out in 

 the most singular manner, mounted to the tops of 

 the tallest forest -trees, and thence hung down 

 in gigantic festoons many hundreds of feet in 

 length. 



These climbing plants cannot live below — they 

 must join the great throng of floral life up above. 

 So that, as Wallace also remarks, walking in a 

 tropical forest is like sauntering amid the columns 



