crap, v.] FOREST TREES. 129 



cimens grown in our English hot-houses have produced 

 flower-spikes of equal length, and with a much larger 

 number of blossoms. 



Flowers were scarce, as is usual in equatorial forests, 

 and it was only at rare intervals that I met with anything 

 striking. A few fine climbers were sometimes seen, 

 especially a handsome crimson and yellow ^Eschynanthus, 

 and a fine leguminous plant with clusters of large Cassia- 

 like flowers of a rich purple colour. Once I found a 

 number of small Anonaceous trees of the genus Polyalthea, 

 producing a most striking effect in the gloomy forest 

 shades. They were about thirty feet high, and their 

 slender trunks were covered with large star-like crimson 

 flowers, which clustered over them like garlands, and 

 resembled some artificial decoration more than a natural 

 product. (See illustration, next page.) 



The forests abound with gigantic trees with cylindrical, 

 buttressed, or furrowed stems, while occasionally the 

 traveller comes upon a wonderful fig-tree, whose trunk is 

 itself a forest of stems and aerial roots. Still more rarely 

 are found trees which appear to have begun growing in 

 mid-air, and from the same point send out wide-spreading 

 branches above and a complicated pyramid of roots de- 

 scending for seventy or eighty feet to the ground below, 

 and so spreading on every side, that one can stand in the 

 very centre with the trunk of the tree immediately over- 



VOL. I. K 



