346 FERNS. 



forests ! The cotton-trees, the figs, the Santa-Marias, 

 the parrot-berries, the broad-leafs, the mahoganies, 

 the locusts, the tropic birches, and multitudes of 

 others, lift their crowns of foliage to the sky, at the 

 summit of hoary columnar trunks of colossal altitude 

 and thickness ; and these massive pillars are the 

 homes of ten thousand parasitic plants. Some of 

 these trees may have a bark of almost unbroken 

 smoothness ; others are deeply cleft and fissured ; but 

 the minute seeds of the parasites find means to effect 

 a lodgment in each, and the growing roots cling 

 firmly to the surface. From the perpendicular trunks, 

 from the hollows and forks of the greater ramifica- 

 tions, and all along the surface of the huge, horizontal 

 limbs, each of them a forest-tree for dimensions, 

 spring great tangled tufts of orchids and wild pines 

 and ferns, and climbing bignonise of gorgeous bloom, 

 and long, depending lianes, some as thin and pliant 

 as whipcord, others woody, thick, and twisted, like 

 huge cables ; making the penetration of the woods 

 difficult beyond conception. 



Of the glorious beauty of the flowering species I 

 must not here speak ; we have enough to do to mind 

 the Ferns. There is one springing from the bark of a 

 fig-tree, which you would take for a loose tuft of 

 grass, so long and grass-like are the narrow leaves. 

 But no ; it is a real Fern, Campyloneurum angusti- 

 folium, one of the great Polypodium genus ; as is 

 seen by the round red seed-groups running in a double 

 line along the under side. Here is another, hand- 



