330 NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



As happens to every stranger in a tropical forest, 

 I was bewildered amidst the great variety of trees that 

 struggle for supremacy, the one condition for victory 

 being to get a full share of the glorious sunshine over- 

 head. By vigorous tugging at one of the lianes that 

 hung like a rope from a branch sixty feet above my 

 head, I succeeded in breaking off a fragment, and 

 identifying one of the larger trees as a species of fig, 

 with large, ov^l, leathery leaves somewhat like those 

 of a magnolia. It is needless to say that each tree is 

 invaded by a host of enemies — parasites that fatten on 

 its substance, comparatively harmless epiphytes that 

 cling to the branches, and hosts of climbing lianes 

 that mount to the topmost branches, robbing them of 

 their share of sunlight, and hang down, often twined 

 together, and in the deep shade are generally mere 

 bare flexible stems. It was strange to observe that 

 one of the deadliest enemies, a small parasite, fixing 

 itself near the ground on the trunks of the larger trees, 

 is a species of fig, belonging to the same genus as some 

 of the giants of the forest, and doubtless tracing its 

 descent from a common ancestor. It is in the tropical 

 forest that one feels the force of Darwin's phrase 

 " struggle for existence," as applied to the vegetable 

 world. In our latitudes it is by an effort of the 

 imagination that we realize the fact that in our fields 

 and woodlands there is a contest going on between 

 rival claimants for the necessary conditions of life. 

 Here we see ourselves in the midst of a scene of 

 savage warfare. The great climbers, like monstrous 

 boas, that twine round and strangle the branch, remind 

 one of the Laocoon ; the obscure parasite that eats 



