22 BEAUTIFUL BIRDS 
great palm-snakes will crawl up the largest tree, and 
crush it and squeeze it till at last it dies and comes 
thundering down in the forest, and then they will 
crawl along the ground to another, and hug that to 
death, too. Then there are tree-ferns, which are ferns 
that have trunks like trees, which are sometimes thirty 
feet high, with fronds growing from their tops, so 
broad and tall that a number of people could sit 
underneath them in their cool, deep shade, as if they 
were a tent. And there are wonderful flowers in 
these forests, such as you only see here in botanical 
gardens or in the conservatories of rich people, orchids 
and pitcher-plants, and others with Latin names that 
one forgets. Some of them are flower-trees, or tree- 
flowers, as high as the trees are, and with hundreds 
of large, crimson blossoms glowing out like stars from 
their trunks. When you come upon them all at once 
in the gloom of the forest, it almost looks as if some 
of the trees were on fire. 
Other flowers are golden like the sun and grow 
all together in clusters, whilst others, again, grow on 
the branches of trees and hang down from them by 
long stalks which are like threads, each thread- 
stalk strung with flowers, as a thread is strung with 
beads. Only these flower-beads are as large as sun- 
flowers, with colours varying from orange to red, and 
with beautiful, deep, purple-red spots upon them. 
