THE SIESTA. 



HE forests of the Tropics, how wonderful their vegetation. Trees of every 

 variety of shape and size, crowded and tangled together, struggle upward 

 toward the light, while twining amid and around their twisted trunks and 

 limbs, lives many a graceful creeper ; or fastened to the side of swinging branches, 

 the parasitic plants make the deep recesses gay with their myriads of flowers, bright 

 in colours of every hue. Although at times these leafy vaults and aisles are silent, 

 no sound disturbing the repose that reigns around save perhaps the' slight rustling 

 of the leaves, or rubbing of the branches as they swing to the passing breeze, yet 

 animal life is never wanting to enliven the apparently lonely depths. Insects of 

 various hues swarm on the earth and over the decaying trees that cumber the 

 ground in every direction ; birds of gorgeous plumage — from the noisy parrot to the 

 resplendent hummer — flit around seeking the fruits that hang in golden clusters 

 from the heavily freighted boughs, or extract the honied juices that lie hidden in the 

 depths of the rainbow-hued flowers. In the swamps and lagoons, serpents with 

 brightly-coloured velvet skin watch for their wonted victims, or hideous alligators 

 in scaly armour, with head alone exposed above the surface, lie motionless. Many a 

 quadruped also roams through the cool, leafy stretches of these primeval woods, 

 shunning the intense heat of the noon-day sun, and lying at length upon some 

 favouring spot, dozes away the hours, to rise refreshed as the day declines, and to 

 commence anew his nightly work of pursuing and destroying his prey. 



Among the inhabitants of the tropical forests, the most formidable and 

 dreaded is the Jaguar, sometimes called the Tiger of South America. Like many 



