BRAZILIAN FOREST. 61 



with most fantastic flowers, climbing up the straight 

 trunks of the trees, or picturesquely covering their 

 branches, which seldom shoot out from the trunk at a 

 less height than fifty to eighty feet from the ground. 

 From the fertility of the soil, the trees spring up so 

 densely, that, when young, their branches, not having 

 room to expand freely, strive to overtop one another. 

 The tillandsias nestle at the ramification of the smaller 

 branches, or upon excrescences, where they often grow to 

 an immense size, and have the appearance of an aloe, the 

 length of a man, hanging down gracefully from a giddy 

 height over the head of the passer-by. 



Among the various plants which spring from the 

 branches or cling to the stems of the trees, are gray, moss- 

 like plants hanging down, not unlike horses' tails, from 

 the branches which support the orchids and tillandsias ; 

 or one might fancy them the long beards of these vener- 

 able giants of the forest, that have stood unbent beneath 

 the weight of a thousand years. Myriads of lianes hang 

 down to the ground, or are suspended in the air, several 

 inches thick, and not unfrequently the size of a man's 

 body, coated with bark like the branches of the trees. 

 But it is impossible for any one to conceive the fantastic 

 forms they assume, all interlaced and entangled : some- 

 times they depend like straight poles to the ground, 

 where striking root, they might, from their thickness, be 

 taken for trees ; at other times they resemble large loops 

 or rings, from ten to twenty feet in diameter, or are so 

 twisted that they look like cables. Sometimes they laco 



