1 86 FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



Mamures, with creeping stems and fan-shaped leaves, 

 something like those of a young coco-nut palm. 

 You try to brush through them, and are caught up 

 instantly by a string or wire belonging to some other 

 plant. You look up and around, and then you find 

 that the air is full of wires — that you are hung up 

 in a network of fine branches belonging to half a 

 dozen different sorts of young trees, and intertwined 

 with as many different species of slender creepers. 

 You thought at your first glance among the tree 

 stems that you were looking through open air ; you 

 find that you are looking through a labyrinth of wire 

 rigging, and must use the cutlass right and left at 

 every five steps." 1 



To these we will add only one other description of 

 the characteristics of a virgin forest. " Its striking 

 characteristics were, the great number and variety of 

 the forest trees, their trunks rising frequently for 

 sixty or eighty feet without a branch, and perfectly 

 straight ; the huge creepers, which climb about them, 

 sometimes stretching obliquely from their summits 

 like the stays of a mast, sometimes winding around 

 their trunks like immense serpents waiting for their 

 prey. Here, two or three together, twisting spirally 

 round each other, form a complete living cable, as if 

 to bind securely these monarchs of the forest ; there, 



1 "At Last," by C. Kingsley, p. 157. 



