178 LEAVES PROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



parasite. Nature, however, has made them ample compen- 

 sation for their uncouth appearance and gloomy, wretched 

 aspect, by giving them a profusion of flowers of unsur- 

 passed brilliancy. 



The snake-like form of the last mentioned cactus is still 

 more strikingly presented in the stem of the lianes of 

 South America. They are almost entirely stem. Stretched 

 out like the strong cordage of a vessel, on which tiger- 

 cats run up and down with wonderful agility, or winding 

 serpent-like in and out, now as cords and now like flat 

 straps, they extend frequently more than a hundred feet, 

 without leaves and without branches. In the primeval 

 forests of the tropics they may be seen hanging from 

 tree to tree, often ascending one, circling it until they 

 choke his life's blood in him then wantonly leaping over 

 to another next falling in graceful festoons, and then 

 climbing up again to the topmost summit of a palm, 

 where, at last, they wave perhaps their bunch of splendid 

 flowers in the highest, purest air. Repulsive in them- 

 selves, these lianes also grow beautiful by the contrast 

 they present with the sturdy monarch of the forest, around 

 which they twine, a contrast which yet, as every thing 

 in nature, produces harmony. How different are these 

 stems again from the beautiful structure of the various 

 grasses ! Here a slender column rises, sometimes to the 

 height of a few inches only, as* in our common mountain 

 grasses, and then, again, in the bamboo, to a towering 

 height, waving their wide-spread tops in the evening breeze, 

 or growing like the gigantic grasses on the banks of the 

 Orinoco, to a height of more than thirty feet, where they 



