AMAZONIAN VEGETATION 363 



reason to believe that there is no carnivorous animal 

 on the Amazon and Orinoco which does not occasion- 

 ally resort to vegetables, and especially to fruits, for 

 food not always of necessity, but often from choice. 

 When, however, we come to consider and compare 

 the distribution of the various classes and sub- 

 ordinate groups of animals, we see that the range 

 of a fruit-eating species or tribe can rarely corre- 

 spond to that of one which feeds on leaves, and 

 similarly of other pairs of differences or contrasts in 

 the nature of the food that, in short, the only 

 animals which can be expected to range from sea to 

 sea in a wide continent are a few general feeders 

 and their parasites, the larger beasts of prey, and 

 the scavengers, such as Vultures among birds (and 

 perhaps Termites among insects). 



As to the distribution of the Lepidoptera in the 

 Amazon valley, it is plain that it can rarely corre- 

 spond to the grander features of the vegetation, for 

 the simple reason that the food of caterpillars is 

 scarcely ever the foliage, etc., of the loftier forest 

 trees, but chiefly of soft-leaved undershrubs and low 

 trees (i) which grow under the shade of the forest 

 and have, many of them, a restricted range; or (2) 

 which spring up where the primeval woods have 

 been destroyed, and in waste places near the habita- 

 tions of men, and whose range in many cases is co- 

 extensive at least with Cisandine Tropical America. 

 The bushy trees and the luxuriant herbs which 

 border savannas and caatingas and broad forest 

 paths, and sometimes those which grow on the very 

 edge of streams, are also apt to be infested by cater- 

 pillars. Of about two thousand forest trees I have 

 had cut down in the Amazon region for the sake ol 



