EXPLANATORY INDEX. 397 



Durham nave, and just as huge; perhaps fluted, like one of 

 William of Wykeham's columns at "Winchester. 



"There is the stem, but where is the tree 1 ? Above the 

 green cloud. You struggle up to it, between two of the 

 board walls, but find it not so easy to reach. Between you 

 and it, are half a dozen tough strings which you had not 

 noticed at first the eye cannot focus itself rapidly enough in 

 the confusion of distances which have to be cut through ere 

 you can pass. Some of them are rooted in the ground, 

 straight and tense ; some of them dangle and wave in the 

 wind at every height. 



"What are they 1 ? Air-roots of wild pines (tiUandsia), 

 or of matapolos, or of figs, or of seguines (pkilodendron, 

 anthurium, &c.) or of some other parasite? Probably: but 

 you cannot see. All you can see is, as you put your chin 

 close against the trunk of the tree and look up, as if you 

 were looking up against the side of a great ship set on end ; 

 that some sixty or eighty feet up in the green cloud, arms as 

 big as English forest trees branch off ; and that out of their 

 forks a whole green garden of vegetation has tumbled down 

 twenty or thirty feet, and half climbed up again. You 

 scramble round the tree to find whence the aerial garden has 

 sprung : you cannot tell. The tree-trunk is smooth and free 

 from climbers ; and that mass of verdure may belong possibly 

 to the very cables which you met ascending into the green 

 cloud twenty or thirty yards back, or to that impenetrable 

 tangle, a dozen yards on, which has climbed a small tree, and 

 then a taller one again, and then a taller still, till it has 

 climbed out of sight, and possibly into the lower branches of 

 the big tree. And what are their species ? What are their 

 families ? Who knows 2 Not even the most experienced 

 woodman or botanist can tell you the names of plants of 

 which he sees only the stems." 



From this tree is procured the Wild Cotton which has 

 already been mentioned on page 134. I believe that yet no use 

 has been found for this delicate and short yellow fibre, except 



