208 NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS 



word "monte" led to the introduction, in a fine and extensively 

 circulated English map of South America, of high mountain ranges, 

 where, in reality, only plains exist. When the Spanish map of La 

 Cruz Olmedilla, which has served as the foundation of so many 

 other maps, showed "Montes de Cacao" ( 3 ), " 'cacao woods," Cor- 

 dilleras were made to rise, although the cacao seeks only the lowest 

 and hottest localities. 



If we comprehend in one general view the wooded region which 

 includes the whole of the interior of South America, from the grassy 

 steppes of Venezuela (los Llanos de Caracas) to the Pampas of 

 Buenos Ayres, or from 8 north to 19 south latitude, we shall 

 perceive that this connected forest of the tropical zone has an extent 

 unequalled in any other portion of the earth's surface. Its area is 

 about twelve times that of Germany. Traversed in all directions 

 by systems of rivers, in which the minor and tributary streams 

 sometimes exceed our Rhine or Danube in the abundance of their 

 waters, it owes the wonderful luxuriance of the growth of its trees 

 to the combined influence of great moisture and high temperature. 

 In the temperate zone, and especially in Europe and Northern Asia, 

 forests may be named from particular genera or species, which, grow- 

 ing together as social plants (plantee sociales), form separate and 

 distinct woods. In the northern forests of Oaks, Pines, and 

 Birches, and in the eastern forests of Limes or Linden trees, 

 usually only one species of Amentaceae, Coniferae, or Tiliacese, pre- 

 vails or is predominant ; sometimes a single species of Needle-trees 

 is intermingled with the foliage of trees of other classes. Tropical 

 forests, on the other hand, decked with thousands of flowers, are 

 strangers to such uniformity of association ; the exceeding variety 

 of their flora renders it vain to ask of what trees the primeval forest 

 consists. A countless number of families are here crowded together, 

 and even in small spaces individuals of the same species are rarely 

 associated. Each day, and at each change of place, new forms 

 present themselves to the traveller, who, however, often finds that 

 he cannot reach the blossoms of trees whose leaves and ramifications 

 had previously arrested his attention. 



The rivers, with their countless lateral arms, afford the only routes 

 by which the country can be traversed. Between the Orinoco, the 



