276 TROPICAL FORESTS. 



marsh, they resemble reeds, or even forests ; and if 

 they are in dry places they disappear for the greater 

 part of the dry season, unless they are preserved by 

 artificial watering. So that in them there is little 

 beauty. But the woods are truly splendid. Not 

 merely the palms, though many of them are gigantic, 

 and almost all of them have a simple grandeur of 

 character which belongs to no other tribe of vege- 

 tables, but the other trees, be the species almost 

 what they may, are, in the undisturbed but often 

 impenetrable forests, the very excess of vegetable 

 action. Bright as is the sun, the trees are so thickly 

 matted, that their shadow turns mid-day into twi- 

 light ; and the branches are full of monkeys gam- 

 bolling and chattering in the most fantastic manner ; 

 and of parrots and other zygodaclytic, or yoke-footed 

 birds, of the most brilliant plumage, scrambling and 

 screaming everywhere. The earth, too, whenever 

 a beam of the bright sun breaks in, is glistening with 

 lizards, and the light is all radiant with humming- 

 birds ; so that all the fancies of the northern roman- 

 cers, whose pictures are of course limned only with 

 the colours which they knew, about fairy-land, are 

 outdone by the plain and simple reality. 



Then the epiphytea, or parasitical plants, are per- 

 haps even more wonderful. The greater number 

 of them belong to the orchidece, many of the British 

 species of which attract, by the singular forms of 

 their flowers, the attention of even those who are 

 not habitual observers of nature. The " bee," the 

 " fly," the " spider," and many other names, have 

 been given to them from resemblances to the ani- 

 mals they are named after, which are not altogether 

 fanciful. The more curious of the native species 

 are most abundant on the dry chalky heights ; and 

 those soils, in Kent especially, are worthy of a visit 

 in April or May for the spider, a month later for the 

 fly, and a month later still for the bee. But they 

 are not confined to the chalk districts ; for some 



