58 THE SUM IMPRESSION 



is the output of living things that it seems simply 

 wasteful. A single tree may produce thousands of 

 flowers. Each flower may have dozens of seeds. 

 The tree may go on flowering for a hundred or two 

 hundred years. So a single tree may produce mil- 

 lions of seeds, each capable of growing into a forest 

 giant like its parent. 



With insect life the same profusion of life is evi- 

 dent. A single moth or butterfly lays thousands of 

 eggs. Mosquitoes, flies, gnats, midges, leeches 

 swarm in myriads upon myriads. 



The abundance and superabundance of life is the 

 first outstanding — though it will prove not the most 

 important — impression made upon us by a contem- 

 plation of the forest as a whole. 



Scarcely less striking than the abundance is the 

 variety. Life does not spring up from the earth in 

 forms as alike one another as two peas. Each indi- 

 vidual plant or animal, however small, however 

 simple, has its own distinctive characteristics. There 

 is variety and variation everywhere. Variety in 

 form, variety in colour, variety in size, variety in 

 character and habit. In size there is the difference 

 between the huge terminalia towering up 200 feet 

 high and the tiny little potentilla ; between the atlas 

 moth 12 inches in spread and the hardly discernible 

 midges ; between the elephant, massive enough to 

 trample its way through the densest forest, and the 

 humble little mouse peeping out of its hole in the 

 ground. In colour the difference ranges from the 

 light blue of the forget-me-not to the deep blue of 

 the gentian ; from the delicate pink of the dianthus 



