NUMBERLESS PARASITES. 
quite thrODgli them, like windows in a narrow tower, yet 
they run cp as Jii^h as their loftiest neigh bo m-s, ivitli a 
straight stem of nniforjti diameter. Another most curious 
form is presented by those which have many of their roots 
high above the ground, appearing to stand on many legs, 
and often forming archways large enough for a man to 
walk beneath. 
The stems of all these trees, and the climbers that 
vtrind or wave around them, support a multitude of de- 
pendants. Tillaiulsias and other Bromeliacea', resembling 
wild pine-apples, large climbing Arums, with their dark 
green, arrowhead- shaped leaves, peppers in great variety, 
and large-leaved ferns, shoot out at inten'als all up the 
stem to the very topmost branches, l^etween these, 
creeping ferns and delicate little species like our Hymeno- 
phyllum abound, and in moist dark places the leaves of 
these are again covered with minute creeping mosses and 
■Jangertnannias, so that w^e have parasites on parasites, 
and on these parasites again. On looldng upwards, the 
infinite variety of foliage, strongly defined against the 
clear sky, is a striking characteristic of the tropical forest, 
and the bright sunshine lighting up all above, while a 
sombre gloom reigns below, adds to the grandeur and 
solemnity of the scene. 
As these vast woods occupy sites of a very different 
character, — here extending along low river-banks, there 
climbing the slopes of gigantic mountains, — here under 
the equator, thevo on the verge of the tropics, where 
many of the trees, annually casting their foliage, remind 
one of the winter of the temperate zone- — it is of course 
quite impossible to embrace all their varieties of form 
and aspect in one general description. 
On descending from the heights of the Andes to the 
plains of tlie itarafion, the eye is attracted, in the more 
elevated forests (the region of the quinquina trees), by 
a variety of fantastically flowering orchids — and of arbores- 
cent ferns, with their lacelike giant leaves— by wonder- 
