\ 

 58 THE HARMONIES OF NATUEE. 



two feet, grow either in less windy situations, or find mutual 

 protection in the social life of the forest. Surrounded by 

 comrades which break the power of the storm, their topmost 

 crowns alone bend under the blast, while the lower branches 

 remain unmoved : above, the legendary wild huntsman of the 

 woods may rave in pursuit of his phantom game ; below, the 

 wanderer threads his way through the green arcades, and 

 scarcely feels the motion of the air. 



In the tropical forests the griping power of the roots is fre- 

 quently assisted by the climbing plants, which, like the rigging 

 of a ship, bind or unite as it were a large number of trees into 

 a single body. While in the East Indian thickets the ratans 

 ascend the highest summits of the forest, so as to be able to 

 spread out their palm-like topes in the sunshine over the waving 

 sea of verdure beneath, the paulinias, the bannisterias, the big- 

 nonias, and many other allied creepers, climb from branch to 

 branch in the Brazilian woods, until their blossoms mix with the 

 crowns of the giant trees. Often three or four of these bush- 

 ropes, like strands in a cable, join tree to tree; others, descend- 

 ing from on high, take root as soon as their extremity touches 

 the ground ; while others send out parallel, oblique, horizontal, 

 and perpendicular shoots in all directions, forming so intricate a 

 network, that in this maze of vegetation it is utterly impossible 

 to discover the trailing stem of the liana, whose flowers are seen- 

 expanding above in all their purple beauty. Frequently trees 

 more than a hundred feet high, uprooted by the storm or under- 

 mined by the swelling river, are stopped in their fall by these 

 amazing cables of nature, and are thus still enabled to send forth 

 vigorous shoots, though far from their perpendicular, with their 

 trunks inclined to every degree from the meridian to the hori- 

 zon. Their heads remain firmly supported by the bush ropes, 

 many of their roots soon refix themselves in the earth, and fre- 

 quently a strong shoot will sprout out perpendicularly from near 

 the root of the reclined trunk, and in time become a stately 

 tree. 



In several plants whose original roots do not seem adequate 

 to support their increasing size, or which grow in situations 

 where great and peculiar powers of resistance are required, new 

 roots issue in a truly wonderful manner from the stem or the 

 lower branches, and, fixing themselves in the ground, serve as 



