IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST 227 



has furnished an interesting example and I puzzled 

 a good deal over it. I covild understand how two 

 limbs growing side by side and becoming chafed 

 might start to unite their abraided surfaces, but 

 in a windy region how could they be held together 

 for the several months necessary to complete the 

 process? The slightest move of either branch 

 would break the incipient union. One day there 

 came to my hammock a man who had spent many 

 years in the tropics and is a born naturalist. 

 Examining the queer inarch he said: "I think I 

 know. After the bark of these limbs was abraided 

 a twining vine grew around them, binding the two 

 parts so firmly together they couldn't move, and 

 since the union the vine has died." Then I 

 wondered at my own stupidity. 



A striking feature of these great forests is the 

 vines— "lianes," "sipos," or "bushropes" as they 

 are variously called in the tropics. In places they 

 reach the upper limits of the tree tops and project 

 down again. Sometimes they are drawn taut and 

 again they hang in loops or festoons, or they coil 

 about in dense masses, and crawl over the ground 

 like endless serpents. Usually the visible parts of 

 the stems are wholly naked, for they are mere water 



