SKETCHES OF WILD ORCHIDS IN GUIANA. 



45 



These are all comparatively low-growing plants ; but there 

 are others which, springing higher, sparsely occupy the whole 

 space between floor and roof. Here and there a few shapeless 

 bushes, hardly clothed by scanty leaves, seem languishing for 

 want of light. Here and there — though partly hidden by 

 hanging dead leaves and fruits, mingled with hanging ferns and 

 climbing Aroids — the massive column-like stem of a " Troolie 

 Palm" (Manicaria saccifera, Gaertn.) tapers gradually upward 

 from its small and sturdy base to where the magnificent uncut 

 leaves, perhaps the largest in the world, curve gradually 

 upward and outward. Or from a densely packed hillock of over- 

 ground roots a cluster of perfectly straight, perfectly bare, 

 slight-looking stems carries the most delicately cut leaves of the 

 " Manicole Palm " {Euterpe edulis, Mart.), some to a height but 

 little above the ground, others midway, and yet others piercing 

 and overtopping the forest roof. Or a " Pimpler Palm " 

 (Astrocaryum), generally of no great height, stands, its stem 

 horrid with curious black thorns, long and flat and sharp. 



Many quaint growths also hang down from the forest roof 

 into this forest chamber. Sometimes an Aroid or a Fig, having 

 perched itself aloft, has let down a single small root, as straight 

 as a plumb-line, which either having reached the ground has 

 there anchored and rooted itself or, without waiting to reach the 

 ground, having sent out rootlets while its growing point still 

 sways in the air, carries nutriment from the moisture-laden 

 atmosphere to its parent above. Sometimes it is the leafless 

 stem of a creeper, small it may be, or huge, round, or flat, or 

 riband-like, or plaited, which hangs down from the roof in coils 

 and loops and knots, or is stretched from tree to tree as taut as 

 ever was rope. Sometime again it is the tree itself which, as 

 if tired of drawing its water from so deep down as the earth to so 

 high up as its own top, sends out masses of adventitious roots 

 from some point on its own trunk, and so also draws an 

 additional supply of moisture from the air. 



Yet there are breaks in this curious land of twilight. Some- 

 times where a big tree has fallen and has carried with it many 

 others — the prolonged crash of such a fall, which generally 

 occurs in the stillness of the night, is a sound to be heard and 

 then never to be forgotten — an oasis of light is formed. Some- 

 times a creek washes away more or less of the trees, the branches 



