xvi Life and Living Creatures 319 



equatorial zone are approached. The densest forests 

 naturally extend on both sides of the equator, where heat 

 and rainfall unite to produce a paradise for plants. The 

 Selvas of the Amazons, the darkest forests of the Congo 

 and its tributaries, the forests of the Western Ghats of 

 India, of the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, and of the 

 islands of the Malay Archipelago, vie with each other as types 

 of the utmost wealth of vegetation. Soft leafy canopies borne 

 'by lofty evergreen trees meet and intercept the light, so that 

 no grass can grow in the dark depths of the woods, but 

 climbing and twining plants innumerable, with stems like 

 ropes or cables, force their way up on the trunks of their 

 stouter rivals, and push on to expand their crown of leaves 

 in the sunlight. The decaying vegetation below supplies 

 abundant nourishment for pale -coloured parasitic plants, 

 which, deprived of sunlight, have lost their chlorophyll and 

 the power to manufacture food, and therefore live on their 

 fellows. 



408. Temperate Forests. On the temperate side of the 

 tropical deserts, the plains reaching into regions of moderate 

 warmth and moderate rainfall become covered with less 

 luxuriant but very extensive forests. These are most 

 developed around the great lakes of North America, in 

 Scandinavia, and as a broad belt from the Carpathians 

 north-eastward to the Baltic, eastward to the Ural Moun- 

 tains, and beyond them across Asia north of 50 to the 

 Pacific Ocean. In Western Europe the ancient forests- 

 which appear to have once formed an unbroken belt across all 

 the northern continents have been cut down and the land 

 cultivated. The warm temperate forests are composed of 

 deciduous trees, that is, trees whose leaves wither and drop 

 each winter, the leaf laboratories being shut up in the com- 

 paratively sunless months. " Oak, beech, elm, ash, lime, and 

 many other kinds of forest tree, are found in their greatest 

 luxuriance in this zone. Toward the pole, where the 

 winters are longer and more severe, the deciduous trees 

 vanish, the hardy birch, with its silvery bark, reaching 

 farthest north. Pines and firs, clad in small, hard, needle- 

 shaped leaves, can alone resist the climate, and vast forests 



