THE EQUATORIAL FORESTS 
futile must be the attempt to reach with hooked 
knives fastened to poles flowers which grew at a 
height of a hundred or more feet, on trees whose 
smooth trunks (far too thick to be swarmed ") rose 
to 50 or 60 feet before putting forth a branch. At 
length the conviction was forced upon me that the 
best and sometimes the only way to obtain the 
flowers or fruits was to cut down the tree; but it 
was long before I could overcome a feeling of 
compunction at having to destroy a magnificent 
tree, perhaps centuries old, merely for the sake of 
gathering its flowers. By little and little I began 
to comprehend that in a forest which is practically 
unlimited — near three millions of square miles clad 
with trees and little else but trees — where even the 
very weeds are mostly trees, and where the natives 
themselves think no more of destroying the noblest 
trees, when they stand in their way, than we the 
vilest weeds, a single tree cut down makes no 
greater a gap, and is no more missed, than when 
one pulls up a stalk of groundsel or a poppy in an 
English cornfield. I considered further that my 
specimens would be stored in the principal public 
and private museums in the world, and would serve 
to identify any particular tree with its products, as 
well as for studying the peculiarities of its structure. 
In fine, I reconciled myself to the commission of an 
act whose apparent vandalism was, or seemed to 
be, counterbalanced by its necessity and utility. 
In the same way I suppose a zoologist stifles his 
qualms of conscience at killing a noble bird or 
quadruped merely for the sake of its skin and 
bones. I know not whether Alexanders and 
Napoleons make use of any such process of reason- 
