138 IN THE GUIANA FOREST. 



obtain their share of what nature has lavished so 

 freely. All these get their fill, and yet there are 

 always more seeds left than can find room to grow. 

 But we will go on to another scene. 



In the savannah rises a great eta palm, perhaps 

 sixty feet high, its mass of roots standing above 

 the water as a mound, from whence proceed the 

 rough but bare stem to a height of fifty feet, where 

 the great dome of fan-shaped leaves crowns its 

 apex. Here are no rivals of its own kind, no bush 

 ropes or smothering creepers, and hardly anything 

 to dispute its claim as monarch of all it surveys. 

 Even here, however, are signs of interdependence. 

 Below the crown stand the remains of a hundred 

 clasping leaf-stalks of different ages, their axils 

 filled with decaying vegetable matter, in which revel 

 the aerial roots of that unique orchid, Catasetum 

 longifolium. With ribbon-like, flexible leaves 

 streaming downwards and great flower-spikes 

 slightly bent outwards to greet the sunlight, this 

 plant also appears to have no rivals. However, we 

 want the orchids and must get them, and the only 

 way to do this safely is by cutting down the beauti- 

 ful palm. We regret this necessity, and even go so 

 far as to send one of the negroes (a well-known 

 cocoanut gatherer) to bring down a plant. But he 

 gets startled at a small gecko lizard, and with a 



