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PARA 



sipos ; the woody, flexible stems of climbing and creeping 

 trees, whose foliage is far away above, mingled with that 

 of the taller independent trees. Some were twisted in 

 strands like cables, others had thick stems contorted in 

 every variety of shape, entwining snake-like round the 

 tree trunks or forming gigantic loops and coils among 

 the larger branches ; others, again, were of zigzag shape, 

 or indented like the steps of a staircase, sweeping from 

 the ground to a giddy height. 



It interested me much afterwards to find that these 

 climbing trees do not form any particular family or genus. 

 There is no order of plants whose especial habit is to climb, 

 but species of many and the most diverse families the bulk 

 of whose members are not climbers, seem to have been 

 driven by circumstances to adopt this habit. The orders 

 Leguminosse, Guttiferae, Bignoniaceae, Moraceae and others, 

 furnish the greater number. There is even a climbing 

 genus of palms (Desmoncus), the species of which are 

 called, in the Tupi language, Jacitara. These have slender 

 thickly-spined, and flexuous stems, which twine about 

 the taller trees from one to the other, and grow to an 

 incredible length. The leaves, which have the ordinary 

 pinnate shape characteristic of the family, are emitted 

 from the stems at long intervals, instead of being col- 

 lected into a dense crown, and have at their tips a number 

 of long recurved spines. These structures are excellent 

 contrivances to enable the trees to secure themselves by 

 in climbing, but they are a great nuisance to the traveller, 

 for they sometimes hang over the pathway and catch 

 the hat or clothes, dragging off the one or tearing the other 

 as he passes. The number and variety of climbing trees 

 in the Amazons forests are interesting, taken in connection 

 with the fact of the very general tendency of the animals, 

 also, to become climbers. 



All the Amazonian, and in fact all South American, 

 monkeys are climbers. There is no group answering to 

 the baboons of the Old World, which live on the ground. 

 The Gallinaceous birds of the country, the representatives 

 of the fowls and pheasants of Asia and Africa, are all 

 adapted by the position of the toes to perch on trees, 

 and it is only on trees, at a great height, that they are 

 to be seen. A genus of Plantigrade Carnivora, allied to 

 the bears (Cercoleptes), found only in the Amazonian 

 forests, is entirely arboreal, and has a long flexible tail 



