CiiAi'. II. CLIMBING TREES AND ANIMALS. 49 



about the taller trees from one to the other, and gTow 

 to an incredible length. The leaves, which have the 

 ordinary pinnate shape characteristic of the family, are 

 emitted from the stems at long intervals, instead of 

 being collected into a dense crown, and have at their 

 tips a number of long recurved spines. These struc- 

 tures are excellent contrivances to enable the trees to 

 secure themselves by in climbing, but they are a great 

 nuisance to the traveller, for they sometimes hang over 

 the pathway and catch the hat or clothes, dragging off 

 the one or tearing the other as he passes. The number 

 and variety of climbing trees in the Amazons forests 

 are interesting, taken in connection with the fact of the 

 very general tendency of the animals, also, to become 

 climbers. 



All the Amazonian, and in fact all South American, 

 monkeys are climbers. There is no group answering to 

 the baboons of the Old World, which live on the ground. 

 The Gallinaceous birds of the country, the representa- 

 tives of the fowls and pheasants of Asia and Africa, are all 

 adapted by the position of the toes to perch on trees, 

 and it is only on trees, at a great height, that they are 

 to be seen. A genus of Plantigrade Carnivora, allied to 

 the bears (Cercoleptes), found only in the Amazonian 

 forests, is entirely arboreal, and has a long flexible tail 

 like that of certain monkeys. Many other similar in- 

 stances could be enumerated, • but I will mention only 

 the Geodephaga, or carnivorous ground beetles, a great 

 proportion of whose genera and species in these forest 

 regions are, by the structure of their feet, fitted to 

 live exclusively on the branches and leaves of trees. 



VOL. I. E 



