The Shade of the Virgin Forest 249 



land ; a forest reserve which, as a compact whole, cannot be 

 equalled save in the basin of the Amazon. 



" The question remains : Is this forest genuine virgin forest, 

 tropical forest of typical formation ? Surely the greater part 

 must be. I will fall back again on Stanley. He says : ' Imagine 

 the whole of France and the Iberian Peninsula densely covered 

 with trees 6 to 60 metres in height, with smooth trunks, 

 whose leafy tops are so close to one another that they inter- 

 mingle and obscure the sun and the heavens, each tree over a 

 metre in thickness. Then ropes stretching across from one tree 

 to another in the shape of creepers and festoons, or curling round 

 the trunks in thick, heavy coils, like endless anacondas, till they 

 reach the highest point. Imagine them in full bloom, their 

 luxuriant foliage combining with that of the trees to obscure 

 the sunlight, and their hundreds of long festoons covered with 

 slender tendrils hanging down from the highest branches till they 

 touch the ground, interlacing one another in a complete tangle.' 

 That sounds highly fantastic, but making every allowance for 

 Stanley's journalistic heroics and extracting the kernel of fact, 

 his description is fairly accurate. 



" This forest possesses the distinctive characteristics of the 

 tropical virgin forest in the great height of its trees, its numerous 

 liane — the most striking amongst them being the Rotan palm — 

 and the many orchids and other parasites. 



" There are many other biological peculiarities which prove its 

 typical tropical character. 



" There is yet another question : How does the flora of the 

 Equatorial Forest compare with that of the forests in the vicinity 

 of the west coast ? Are we to accept the widespread opinion, 

 viz., that it is inferior in species, especially of the endemic order ? 

 This question may be decidedly answered in the negative, and I 

 look upon this fact as one of the most important botanical results 

 of the expedition. This forest, with which we became familiar 

 in its most eastern portions, is in no way inferior to the forest 

 of the Cameroons and Gaboon so far as wealth of interesting 



types is concerned. Bipinde in the Cameroons, distant about 

 2 G 



