74 
VARIETY IN THE FOREST. 
¥'gi% from climbers; and that mass of verdure may belong 
possibly to the very cables which you met ascend- 
ing into the green cloud twenty or thirty yards 
back, or to that impenetrable tangle, a dozen yards '•'^ 
on, which has climbed a small tree, and then a 
taller one again, and then a taller still, till it has* climbed 
out of sight, and possibly into the lower branches of the 
big tree. And Avhat are their species ? what are their 
families ? Who knows ? Not even the most experienced 
woodman or botanist can tell you the names of plants of 
which he sees only the stems. The leaves, the flowers, 
the fruit, can only be examined by felling the tree ; and 
not even always then, for sometimes the tree when cut 
refuses to fall, linked as it is by chains of liana to all 
the trees around." 
Another feature of the tropical forest is its variety. In Europe we 
have woods of fir and pine, groves of oak or beech, one particular family 
of trees being always dominant ; but it is not so here. Species totalh'^ 
unlike each other stand side by side : an infinite mass of trunks — rough, 
smooth, or pricklj' ; fluted, angular, or round ; sloping or upright ; 
branched, arched, jointed ; with branches as diverse as the trunks, and 
leaves as diverse as the branches — seems to defy every attempt at 
