LIANAS AND CLIMBING PLANTS. 175 



thoroughly equatorial in its character ; the gigantic trees, 

 intermixed with others of smaller dimensions, being 

 lashed together by millions of lianas and other creepers, 

 forming a dense and tangled network of vegetable 

 cordage. The trees also grow so thickly together, that 

 their branches interlace, and form a canopy almost 

 entirely impenetrable to sunlight; a solemn gloom 

 therefore constantly pervades the recesses of these 

 forests, amounting even on fine days to a regular 

 twilight, while with misty or rainy weather, the page 

 of a book becomes unreadable. * In the morning the 

 march is generally delayed in forests of this dense 

 character for a considerable time after the sun is up, 

 before there is sufficient light to enable travellers to 

 see their way; while by night of course the darkness 

 is something so intense that it can almost be felt. 



Now, in studying this question, we must always 

 remember that the forest discovered by Stanley, large 

 as it may be, bears but a very small proportion com- 

 pared with the vast area of the great equatorial forest 

 region, when taken as a whole, and that as Mr. 

 Wallace has pointed out, 



"with but few and unimportant exceptions, a great forest 

 'band'" (of this character) "from 1000 to 1500 miles in 

 width, girdles the earth at the Equator, clothing hill, plain, 

 and mountain, with an evergreen mantle. Lofty peaks are 

 sometimes bare, but often the woody covering continues to 

 a height of eight or ten thousand feet." f 



And, while the late discoveries have served to fill 

 up a gap upon the map of Africa, they merely tend 



* Report of a speech by Mr. Stanley at a meeting of the Royal 

 Geographical Society, in Times of May 6, 1890. 



f Tropical Nature, by Alfred R. Wallace, 1878, p. 27. 



