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There are many peculiarities which strike one in a tropical forest,
affording strong contrasts to ours of the north, not only in the
nature of the products, but also in the seemingly incongruous
mingling of various species of trees. We have pine forests, oak
forests, cedar, birch, and maple woods; but in the low latitudes,
fruit and timber trees abide together in utmost harmony. It would be a
singular sight in New England if we were to find peach or apple trees
bearing after their kind among a forest of oaks, or cherry and plum
trees producing their fruit in a pine grove. In a Ceylon jungle, the
banian and the palm, the bread-fruit, banana, satinwood, calamander,
mango, and bamboo, tamarind, and ebony, mingle familiarly together.
This is a peculiarity born of the wonderful vegetable productiveness
of the equatorial regions, which seem to give indiscriminative birth
to fruits and flowers, wherever there is sufficient space to nourish
their roots and to expand the branches.

Each one of these tall forest trees, so various in species and so thrifty
in growth, serves to sustain some other vegetable life, mostly in the form
of creeping, clinging plants. Scarcely one is seen in the jungle without
its dependent of this nature, and many of them are rendered extremely
lovely by rich festoons of blossoms, which they bear in profusion,
reminding one of the clusters of blue and purple wistarias so common in our
country. A forest tree wreathed with golden allamandas, when seen for the
first time, is a new and never-to-be-forgotten revelation of beauty,
forming a towering mass of bloom. Nature is a charming decorator. Her sweet
combinations never outrage the most delicate, aesthetic taste; art may
imitate, but it cannot rival her. Orchids, ferns, and the most exquisite
mosses in myriads of shades abound, all struggling for space to expand
their gorgeous beauty, while blossoms of scarlet, lilac, and purest white
festoon the tallest stems. The loftiest forest trees are rarely without
examples of these often lovely parasites, adhering to and drawing life from
their abundant vitality. About some of the largest trees, plain, stout
vines, with rich leaves but bearing no flowers, are also seen entwined from
base to top, binding the trunk upon which they cling like a huge piece of
cordage or a ship's hawser. These vines, as they grow from year to year,
tighten their clasp upon the trunk of the tree, slowly but surely choking
it, until th