II 
EQUATORIAL VEGETATION 
245 
way on the tops of these smaller trees overshadowed by the 
dense canopy above them they would be out of sight of both 
groups of insects ; but being placed openly on the stems, and 
in the greatest profusion, they cannot fail to attract the atten- 
tion of the wandering butterflies. 
Uses of Equatorial Forest Trees 
Amid this immense variety of trees, the natives have found 
out such as are best adapted to certain purposes. The wood 
of some is light and soft, and is used for floats or for carving 
rude images, stools, and ornaments for boats and houses. The 
flat slabs of the buttresses are often used to make paddles. 
Some of the trees with furrowed stems are exceedingly strong 
and durable, serving as posts for houses or as piles on which 
the water-villages are built. Canoes, formed from a trunk 
hollowed out and spread open under the action of heat require 
one kind of wood, those built up with planks another ; and as 
the species of trees in these forests are so much more numer- 
ous than the wants of a semi-civilised population, there are 
probably a large number of kinds of timber which will some 
day be found to be well adapted to the special requirements 
of the arts and sciences. The products of the trees of the 
equatorial forests, notwithstanding our imperfect knowledge 
of them, are already more useful to civilised man than to the 
indigenous inhabitants. To mention only a few of those whose 
names are tolerably familiar to us, we have such valuable 
woods as mahogany, teak, ebony, lignum-vitse, purple -heart, 
iron-wood, sandal-wood, and satin-wood ; such useful gums as 
india-rubber, gutta-percha, tragacanth, copal, lac, and dammar ; 
such dyes as are yielded by log-wood, brazil-wood, and sappan- 
wood ; such drugs as the balsams of Capivi and Tolu, camphor, 
benzoin, catechu or terra-japonica, cajuput oil, gamboge, quin- 
ine, Angostura bark, quassia, and the urari and upas poisons ; 
of spices we have cloves, cinnamon, and nutmegs; and of 
fruits, brazil-nuts, tamarinds, guavas, and the valuable cacao ; 
while residents in our tropical colonies enjoy the bread-fruit, 
avocado-pear, custard-apple, durian, mango, mangosteen, sour- 
sop, papaw, and many others. This list of useful products 
from the exogenous trees alone of the equatorial forests, 
excluding those from the palms, shrubs, herbs, and creepers, 
