220 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [SEPTEMBER 
discovered. The roads which were being cut into the interior were 
expected to open up and determine the size of this new oil field. Near 
one of the oil wells stood giant forest trees, with bases buttressed by 
thin irregular plates which reached to a height of ten or twelve feet 
from the ground. On one of these trees, twisting about its gray trunk, 
was an epiphytic fern with dimorphic leaves, the basal ones like sau- 
cers closely appressed to the thick fleshy rootstock which they pro- 
tected from the bright sunlight and its drying action. 
On the same tree, while examining this fern, we disturbed a num- 
ber of large gray ants which had built a paper-like nest on one of the 
broad flat buttresses. Like a company of veterans they rushed out of 
the nest and ranged themselves at regular distances from each other 
about their home. Every ant stood upright, curled its abdomen 
upward between its hind legs as if ready to sting, and with waving 
antennae awaited the enemy. On the parchment-like walls of the nest 
these warriors, as they hurried out, beat a sharp tattoo which was much 
louder but similar to that sounded by the termite warriors on the thin 
wooden walls of their galleries. 
The newly made roadways through the forest were strewn with 
fruits which had fallen from the tops of the tall trees. Some of these 
were of the brightest orange and others a clear lemon-yellow, others 
still were purple and brilliant green. None, however, were edible, 
though many were most attractive looking. 
In the tree-tops overhead, bright green parrots chattered, and a 
small cicada with a shrill but not unpleasant note kept up an incessant 
racket. Once a black parrot with red head flew low through the trees, 
looking like a flash of crimson light. Most of the birds, however, were 
in this season in the tops of the highest trees. 
As in all tropical forests I have ever visited, the flowers in Boela 
were scarce. One bright crimson representative of the lily family, 
with a spike as large as a pineapple, was the only showy species 
observed. The botanical fancy is attracted in these forests by the 
curious creepers, which fling their supple stems about the tall forest 
trees and spread out their dark green tops above those of their support: 
ing neighbors, until the latter are robbed of sunlight and slowly die. 
There are curious masses of stilt-like roots from which rise tall slender 
trunks; the pendant barbed tips of the rattan palm catch and hold 
you; delicate masses of green filmy ferns form soft pads on the fallen 
trunks ; dusky chocolate-brown masses of the myxomycete (Stemonitis) 
