76 
COLOSSAL TKEES. 
whose roots we are sitting. For amid the gi-een cloud you may see 
sprigs of leaf somewhat like that of a weeping willow ; and there, pro- 
bably, is the trunk to which they belong, or ratlier what will be a 
trunk at last. At present it is like a number of round-edged boards 
of every size, set on end, and slowly coalescing at their edges. There 
is a slit down the middle of the trunk, twenty or thirty feet long. 
You may see the green light of the forest shining through it. And 
above all, you catch a glimpse of a crimson mass of norantea ; and, 
black as yew against the blue sky and white cloud, the plumes of a 
palmiste, which has climbed towards the light, it may be for centuries, 
through the green cloud ; and now, weary and yet triumphant, rests 
her dark head among the bright foliage of a ceiba, and feeds unhin- 
dered on the sun." It is in and among these luxuriant forest scenes 
that the humming-birds and the cuckoos, the merles and the solitaires, 
pass through the phases of their blithesome lives. 
THE VIRGIN FORESTS OF SOUTH AMERICA : THEIR BIRD-LIFE. 
We cross now to tlie tropical forest of the Amazons, which differs 
widely in its character from that of the Antilles, and is the favourite 
habitat of numerous families of birds. 
Through the labours of Edwards, Wallace, Herndon, Bates, Agassiz, 
and others, English readers liave been made familiar with its aspects. 
They are acquainted with its giant trees, which rise to the height of 
one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet, and begin to throw off their 
first branches at an elevation exceeding the whole stature of our European 
forest-trees ; colossal trunks, — vegetable Anakim, — whicli have been 
matured by centuries of abundant rains and glowing sunshine. These 
trunks, as everybody knows, are exceedingly diversified in form; some 
round and stately like an Ionic column, others angular and stooping, 
and others like an open network, through which the light passes in 
showers of golden arrows. The girth of many is surprising. That of 
the lecythis or of the cratcfiva measures fifty to sixty feet at the point 
where it becomes cylindrical. Only one such tree can flourish in a 
given space ; it usurps the whole domain, and none but individuals of 
much inferior size can gain a footing near it. The total height of the 
