AMAZONIAN VEGETATION 363 
reason to believe that there is no carnivorous animal 
on the Amazon and Orinoco which does not occasion- 
ally resort to vegetables, and especially to fruits, for 
food — not always of necessity, but often from choice. 
When, however, we come to consider and compare 
the distribution of the various classes and sub- 
ordinate groups of animals, we see that the range 
of a fruit-eating species or tribe can rarely corre- 
spond to that of one which feeds on leaves, and 
similarly of other pairs of differences or contrasts in 
the nature of the food — that, in short, the only 
animals which can be expected to range from sea to 
sea in a wide continent are a few general feeders 
and their parasites, the larger beasts of prey, and 
the scavengers, such as Vultures among birds (and 
perhaps Termites among insects). 
As to the distribution of the Lepidoptera in the 
Amazon valley, it is plain that it can rarely corre- 
spond to the grander features of the vegetation, for 
the simple reason that the food of caterpillars is 
scarcely ever the foliage, etc., of the loftier forest 
trees, but chiefly of soft-leaved undershrubs and low 
trees (i) which grow under the shade of the forest 
and have, many of them, a restricted range ; or (2) 
which spring up where the primeval woods have 
been destroyed, and in waste places near the habita- 
tions of men, and whose range in many cases is co- 
extensive at least with Cisandine Tropical America. 
The bushy trees and the luxuriant herbs which 
border savannas and caatingas and broad forest 
paths, and sometimes those which grow on the very 
edge of streams, are also apt to be infested by cater- 
pillars. Of about two thousand forest trees I have 
had cut down in the Amazon region for the sake of 
