cteristics of the forest vegetation is the
way in which many of the trunks of the trees are supported by
buttresses. The huge sumaumera is especially remarkable; but this
disposition to throw out supports is not confined to one tree. It
occurs in many families. These buttresses start at a distance of about
ten feet from the ground, separating greatly towards the base, where
they are often ten to twelve feet in depth. The lower part of the trunk
is thus divided into several open compartments, so large that, if roofed
over, they would form a hut with sufficient space for two people to
stand up or lie down in. Others, however, rise to the height of twenty
or thirty feet, and run up in the form of ribs to forty or fifty feet.
Other trees appear as if they were composed of a number of slender
stalks bound together, and are ribbed to their entire height. In some
places the furrows reach completely through them, and appear like the
narrow windows of a tower. The stems of others again rise on the summit
of numerous roots, like the bulging-stemmed palm, apparently standing on
a number of legs at the height of a dozen feet or more from the ground.
Often the roots thus form archways sufficiently large for a person to
walk beneath.

SIPOS OR WILD VINES.

Circling round the stems of trees in innumerable coils, and grasping
them with a deadly embrace, grow in rich luxuriance countless wild
vines, well meriting the name of murdering sipos. They hang in festoons
from their boughs, and form an intricate tracery of network from tree to
tree,--often of sufficient strength to support the falling monarchs of
the forest when time has wrought decay among their roots.

Here are seen tillandsias and bromeliaceae, like the crowns of huge
pineapples; large climbing arums, with their dark green and arrow-head
shaped leaves, forming fantastic and graceful ornaments swinging in
mid-air; while huge-leaved ferns and other parasites cling to the stems
up to the very highest branches. These are again covered by other
creeping plants; and thus we see parasites on parasites, and on these
parasites again. As we gaze upwards, we see against the clear blue sky
the finely divided foliage, many of the largest of the forest-trees
having leaves as delicate as those of the trembling mimosa: among them
appear the huge palmate leaves of the cecropias, and the oval glossy
ones of the clusias, countless others of intermediate forms adding to
the variety