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tree to the other across the forest. Calamus is one of the many 

 genera that make a trail necessary through the forest. Its 

 stems and petioles are thorny, and be"ng green in color they are 

 not easily seen against the green background. Worse than 

 these, it has a thorny prolongation of the leaf rachis, called a 

 whip, which is one of the most murderous things met with in the 

 forest. This elongated rachis begins by growing upward, and 

 if it meets with an obstruction, such as the limb of a tree, the 

 reflexed thorns upon it catch and support the plant. But if an 

 obstruction is not met with, the whip soon hangs down from its 

 own weight. These pendent whips are common all through the 

 forest, so slender and so green that they are scarcely noticed, 

 but so strong, and armed with such sharp thorns, that they never 

 let go of anything which they may catch. Luckily, the hat brim 

 catches most of them. Off comes the hat, and the owner must 

 turn around and pick it off the whip where it hangs suspended. 

 But if the whip catches the clothing, or still worse, the person, 

 a piece of cloth or of skin will come out before the whip lets 

 loose. So the path of the botanist away from the cleared trail 

 is indeed beset with thorns. 



Other forms of lianas are everywhere, and constitute one of 

 the most striking features of the forest. There are twiners, root 

 climbers, and tendril climbers. There are little species, ap- 

 pressed to the trunks of trees, and big fellows a foot in trunk 

 diameter, and so tall that their foliage is lost in the general forest 

 cover. They climb on the trees, they climb on each other, they 

 stretch across the path and from tree to tree in great festoons 

 and loops. They disappear into the upper branches, or they 

 hide the tree trunks behind dense masses of green foliage. They 

 exist in dozens of species, in every shape and size and habit of 

 growth imaginable. Also, for the most part they are unidentified 

 and almost unidentifiable, because it is practically impossible 

 to find the leaves or flowers of the larger ones. 



Of the smaller lianas, species of Pothos are common. Their 

 slender stems lie closely appressed to the trunks of large smooth- 

 barked trees, and seem to show a special preference for the sur- 

 face of buttress roots. Their leaves are similarly appressed to 



