86 
TROPICAL FORESTS. 
about them. But I share in your desire to 
see tropical vegetation especially. I should 
like to go through one of those Brazilian 
forests, where the most beautiful air-plants 
grow and blossom upon the stems of the 
trees, and where the great Lianas or creep¬ 
ing vines, as large round as your arm, throw 
themselves from tree to tree in long fes¬ 
toons, affording means of passage to the 
troops of monkeys. Here you may see, in 
the shady damp places, great tree-ferns, 
sometimes forty feet high, some of them 
having their trunks covered with down, 
others with scales, others again with a white 
metallic-looking powder, all graceful and 
peculiar in their shape as the small ferns 
which you admire so much in our own 
woods. The air is perfumed with the smell 
of vanilla and other fragrant plants; and in 
every place are hundreds of the most beauti¬ 
ful and singular insects, which fill the air 
with their various notes. But there are 
plenty of other sounds besides the hum of in¬ 
sects. The assemblies of howling monkeys 
chaunt their doleful choruses on the tree- 
tops, especially before rain, and the parrots 
add their shrill voices. Troops of peccaries 
