July 1891.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 181 



outer garments soon become perfectly wet, the hair gets soaked, 

 moisture trickles down the nose and cheeks, and flows in 

 rivulets over the body. The forest is intensely still ; you hear 

 none of those sounds of insect life which are so unceasing 

 in the sunshine, the silence becomes oppressive, the cry of a 

 bird is rare, and if a howling monkey does for a few minutes 

 startle you with its wonderful combination of appalling 

 shrieks and growls, that only emphasizes the stillness when it 

 ceases as suddenly as it began. One pushes onwards with the 

 dogged determination to get to the end of the day's journey, 

 guided not by any indication of path on the ground, but by 

 almost invisible marks of broken twigs and saplings purposely 

 made by some former party of Indians, — onwards, tramping 

 through the bushwood, splashing through the shallow creeks, 

 here tripped up by a creeper, and there caught round the 

 neck by a bush-rope, stopping sometimes to admire a tree, 

 sometimes to pick a fern, or to watch a group of monkeys 

 making great leaps from tree to tree in their hurry to escape, 

 and always with the perspiration oozing, dropping, streaming, 

 — onwards till some Indian house in a clearing is reached, 

 where one may halt for the night. Nature has nowhere any 

 more effective forcing-house than those forests of Demerara. 

 Issuing from the forest into the clearing, you pass from 

 twilight into bright sunshine, and the change is as welcome 

 as it is sudden. It is delightful to emerge from the dispirit- 

 ing gloom of the forest into the exhilarating light of heaven, 

 and even in the matter of heat it is pleasant to escape from 

 the close moistness under the trees, though one has to ex- 

 change it for the fiercer rays of the sun. Such a clearing is 

 usually two or three acres in extent, and is very roughly 

 made. The trees have in a fashion been cut down and 

 burnt, but the burning has been carried out to so little 

 effect that the whole place is covered with upright portions 

 of stems still rooted in the ground, and littered with fallen 

 trunks and branches. In this rough field or garden the 

 Indian hut occupies the centre, and all around Cassava 

 {Manihot tdilissima) is thickly planted, from which the 

 natives derive their principal subsistence. Close to the 

 house there are probably a Paripee palm and a Papaw tree 

 (Carica Papaya, L.) ; there is likely, also, to be a picturesque 

 group of plantains, occasionally a few oranges, limes, or coco 



