164 IN THE GUIANA FOREST. 



Termites are already at work, as may be seen from . 

 their great black nests which occupy every fork, 

 and beetles are found everywhere above and below. 

 Woodpeckers hunt for larvae, making great holes in 

 the rotten timber, and parrots build their nests in 

 these excavations. Water trickles down into them 

 and helps on the work of destruction, which, al- 

 though it may take a few years to complete, is 

 nevertheless done more quickly than might be sup- 

 posed. A mora pillar may last from fifty to a hun- 

 dred years in a building, but hardly a tenth as long in 

 the forest. If we look carefully around us, we see 

 examples of entire obliteration, a clusia or fig 

 standing on its reticulated hollow pillar with only 

 a heap of brown humus at its base to show what 

 has become of the trunk which once stood up in all 

 its majesty on that spot. 



As if the trees had not enough to contend with 

 from elbowing, smothering, and strangling, another 

 enemy, the blood-sucker, has arisen to disturb their 

 peace. Species of Loranthaceae the mistletoe 

 family are very common in the forest Unlike 

 the pretty Christmas bush, however, these are 

 monsters of a most pronounced type, often forming 

 bushes twenty feet through. Like the stranglers 

 they are propagated by birds, which eat the glu- 

 tinous pulp of their berries and clear away the 



