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spirit of adventure or necessity, renders it so | these wildernesses. There is one kind of repugnant to him. He feels that it is as yet parasitic tree, very common near Para, which the inheritance only of arboreal man- the monkey.

Another class of philosophers, like Buckle, have assigned the exceeding luxuriance of vegetation in the primeval forest as the reason why "civilization" cannot gain a firm footing in a region where so much of labor and energy is expended in keeping down the of vegeta

thousands and thousands of

germs

exhibits this feature in a very prominent manner. It is called the Sipo Matador, or the Murderer Liana. It belongs to the fig order, and has been described and figured by Von Martius in the Atlas to Spix and Martius's Travels. I observed many specimens. The base of its stem would be unable to bear the weight of the upper growth; it is obliged, therefore, to support itself on a tree of another species. In this it is not esble life ever ready to dispute with man the sentially different from other climbing trees, and plants, but the way the matador sets possession of the soil. The expression, how-about it is peculiar, and produces certainly ever, is erroneous. It should have been a disagreeable impression. It springs up "population." There is nothing at all to prevent the highest amount of civilization displaying itself in Amazonia. The great rivers are navigable-open a tract in the forest, and it can be cultivated, and the produce elaborated by all that is most perfect in appliances and machinery - but the energetic vegetation opposes itself to the more humble settler, and hence it acts as a bar upon the spread of population, not of civilization-simply as such.

close to the tree on which it intends to fix itself, and the wood of its stem grows by spreading itself like a plastic mould over one side of the trunk of its supporter. It then puts forth, from each side, an arm-like branch, which grows rapidly, and looks as though a stream of sap were flowing and hardening as it went. This adheres closely to the trunk of the victim, and the two arms meet on the opposite side and blend together. These arms are put forth at somewhat irregular intervals in mounting upwards, and the victim, when its strangler is full grown, becomes tightly clasped by a number of inflex

larger as the murderer flourishes, rearing its crown of foliage to the sky mingled with that of its neighbor, and in course of time they kill it by stopping the flow of its sap. The strange spectacle then remains of the selfish parasite clasping in its arms the lifeless and decaying body of its victim, which had been a help to its own growth. Its ends have been served it has flowered and fruited, reproduced and disseminated its kind and now, when the dead trunk moulders away, its own end approaches; its support is gone, and itself also falls."

The first great feature of the primeval forest is, then, its "impenetrability; "the sec-ible rings. These rings gradually grow ond, is its non-adaptation to the development of the human species; the third, is the exceeding energy and restless rivalry of vegetation. A German traveller, Burmeister, has said that the contemplation of a Brazilian forest produced on him a painful impression, on account of the vegetation displaying such a spirit of restless selfishness, eager emulation, and craftiness. He thought the softness, carnestness, and repose of European woodland scenery were far more pleasing, and that these formed one of the causes of the superior moral character of European nations. According to this view of the case, the primeval forest is not only not suited for the development of man, but is not calculated to improve his moral and intellectual faculties. How this happens will be best explained by an extract from Mr. Bates's admirable work now before us :

"In these tropical forests each plant and tree seems to be striving to outvie its fellow, struggling upwards towards light and airbranch and leaf and stem-regardless of its neighbors. Parasitic plants are seen fastening with firm grip on others, making use of them with reckless indifference as instruments for their own advancement. Live and let live is clearly not the maxim taught in

The Murderer Sipo merely exhibits, in a more conspicuous manner than usual, the struggle which necessarily exists amongst vegetable life in these crowded forests, where individual is competing with individual and species with species, all striving to reach light and air in order to unfold their leaves and perfect their organs of fructification. All species entail in their successful struggles the injury or destruction of many of their neighbors or supporters, but the process is not in others so speaking to the eye as it is in the case of the matador. The efforts to spread their roots are as strenuous in some plants and trees as the struggle to mount upwards is in others. From these apparent

strivings result the buttressed stems, the| dangling air roots, and other similar phe

nomena.

The very general tendency of the animals that dwell in the primeval forests to become climbers is as remarkable as in the plants. The impenetrability of primeval forests, It must be premised that the amount and their non-adaptation to the human species, variety of life in the primeval forests is much and the rivalry of vegetation, are not their smaller than would, à priori, be expected. only almost peculiar and certainly striking There is a certain number of mammals, birds, phenomena. The climbing character of the and reptiles, but they are widely scattered, plants and animals is equally remarkable. and all excessively shy of man. The region The tendency to climb, forced upon specific is so extensive and uniform in the forest creations by the necessities of circumstance- clothing of its surface, that it is only at long the getting up in so dense a vegetation to intervals that animals are seen in abundance light and air - is peculiarly attested by when some particular spot is found which is the fact that climbing trees do not form any more attractive than others. Brazil, moreparticular family or genus. There is no or- over, is throughout poor in terrestrial mamder of plants whose especial habit it is to mals, and the species are of small size; they climb, but species of many and of the most do not, therefore, form a conspicuous feature diverse families, the bulk of whose members in its forests. The huntsman would be disare not climbers, seem to have been driven appointed who expected to find there flocks by circumstances to adopt this habit. The of animals similar to the buffalo herds of orders Leguminosa, the Guttiferæ, Bignoniaceæ, Moraceæ, and others, furnish the greater number. There is even a climbing genus of palms (Desmoncus), the species of which are called, in the Tupi language, Jacitara. These have slender, thickly spined, and flexuous stems, which twine about the taller trees from one to the other, and grow to an incredible length. The leaves, which have the ordinary pinnate shape characteristic of the family, are emitted from the stems at long intervals, instead of being collected into a dense crown, and have at their tips a number of long recurved spines. These structures are excellent contrivances to enable the trees to secure themselves by in climbing; but they are a great nuisance to the traveller, for they sometimes hang over the pathway and catch the hat or clothes, dragging off the one or tearing the other as he passes. The trees that do not climb are for the same reasons exceedingly tall, and their trunks are everywhere linked together by the woody flexible stems of climbing and creeping trees, whose foliage is far away above, mingled with that of the taller independent trees. Some are twisted in strands, like cables, others have thick stems contorted in every variety of shape, entwining, snake-like, round the tree trunks, or forming gigantic loops and coils among the larger branches; others, again, are of zig-zag shape, or indented like the steps of a staircase, sweeping from the ground to a giddy height.

North America, or the swarms of antelopes and herds of ponderous pachyderms of Southern Africa. The largest and most interesting portion of the Brazilian mammal fauna is also aboreal in its habits. All the Amazonian, and in fact, all South American monkeys, are climbers. There is no group answering to the baboons of the Old World which live on the ground. The most intensely arboreal animals in the world are the South American monkeys of the family Cebidæ, many of which have a fifth hand for climbing in their prehensile tails, adapted for this function by their strong muscular development, and the naked palms under their tips. A genus of plantigrade carnivora, allied to the bears (Cercoleptes), found only in the Amazonian forests, is entirely arboreal, and has a long flexible tail like that of certain monkeys. Even the gailinaceous birds of the country-the representatives of the fowls and pheasants of Asia and Africa—are all adapted by the position of the toes to perch on trees, and it is only on trees, at a great height, that they are to be seen. A great proportion of the genera and species of the Geodephaga, or carnivorous ground beetles, are also in these forest regions fitted by the structure of their feet to live exclusively on the branches and leaves of trees. This, according to Mr. Bates, who adopts the Darwinian theory, would seem to teach us that the South American fauna has been slowly adapted to a forcst life, and,

therefore, that extensive forests must have encumbered with fallen and rotten trunks, branches, and leaves; the whole illuminated by a glowing vertical sun, and reeking with moisture.

always existed since the region was first peopled by mammalia.

Even reptiles and insects do not abound in primeval forests so much as might have been anticipated. A stranger is, at first, afraid in these swampy shades of treading at each step on some venomous reptile. But, although numerous in places, they are by no means so generally, and then they belong, for the most part, to the non-venomous genera. Our traveller got for a few moments once completely entangled in the folds of a snake-a wonderfully slender kind, being nearly six feet in length, and not more than half an inch in diameter at its broadest part. It was a species of dryophis. The hideous sucurugu, or water-boa (Eunectes murinus), is more to be dreaded than the forest snakes, save the more poisonous kinds, as the javaraca (Craspedocephalus atrox), and will often attack

man.

Boas are so common in the wet season as to be killed even in the streets of Para. Amongst the more common and most curious snakes are the Amphisbœnæ, an innocuous genus, allied to the slow-worm of Europe, and which lives in the subterranean chambers of the sauba ant. The natives call it, as the Orientals would do, Mai das Saübas, “the mother of ants."

The primeval forest is also, for the most part, free from mosquitoes and insect pests. It is this that, with the endless diversity, the comparative coolness of the air, the varied and strange forms of vegetation, and even the solemn gloom and silence, combine to render even this wilderness of trees and lianas attractive. Such places, Mr. Bates remarks, are paradises to a naturalist, and if he be of a contemplative turn, there is no situation more favorable for his indulging this tendency. There is something in a tropical forest akin to the ocean (Humboldt had made the same remark before) in its effects on the mind. Man feels so completely his insignificance there, and the vastness of na

ture.

Some idea may be formed of the appearance of things in the low ground, by conceiving a vegetation like that of the great palmhouse at Kew spread over a large tract of swampy ground, but he must fancy it mingled with large exogenous trees, similar to our oaks and elms, covered with creepers and parasites, and figure to himself the ground

This is not the case, however, with the great extent of the primeval forests-that which is truly geographical in importance, and which stretches many hundreds of miles in some directions without a break. The land is there more elevated and undulating ; the many swamp plants, with their long and broad leaves, are wanting; there is less underwood, and the trees are wider apart. The general run of these trees have not remarkably thick stems; the great and uniform height to which they grow without emitting a branch, is a much more noticeable feature than their thickness, but at intervals a veritable giant towers up. Only one of these monstrous trees can grow within a given space; it monopolizes the domain, and none but individuals of much inferior size can find a footing near it. The cylindrical trunks of these larger trees are generally about twenty to twenty-five feet in circumference. Von Martius mentions having measured trees in the Para district which were fifty to sixty feet in girth at the point where they become cylindrical. The height of the vast columnlike stems is not less than a hundred feet from the ground to their lowest branch. The total height of these trees, stem and crown together, may be estimated at from a hundred and eighty to two hundred feet, and where one of them stands, the vast dome of foliage rises above the other forest trees as a domed cathedral does above the other buildings in a city. The gallinaceous birds of the forest, perched on these domes, are completely out of reach of an ordinary fowling-piece.

A very remarkable feature in these trees is the growth of buttress-shaped projections around the lower part of their stems. The spaces between these buttresses, which are generally thin walls of wood, form specious chambers, and may be compared to stalls in a stable some of them are large enough to hold half a dozen persons. The purpose of these structures is as obvious, at the first glance, as that of the similar props of brickwork which support a high wall. They are not peculiar to one species, but are common to most of the larger forest trees. Their nature and manner of growth are explained when a series of young trees of different ages

is examined. It is then seen that they are countries. Plants do not flower or shed their the roots which have raised themselves ridgelike out of the earth; growing gradually upwards as the increasing height of the tree required augmented support. Thus they are plainly intended to sustain the massive crown and trunk in these crowded forests, where lateral growth of the roots in the earth is rendered difficult by the multitude of competitors.

leaves, nor do birds moult, pair, or breed simultaneously. In Europe, a woodland scene has its spring, its summer, its autumnal, and its winter aspects. In the equatorial forests the aspect is the same, or nearly so, every day in the year-a circumstance which imparts additional interest to the diurnal cycle of phenomena-budding, flowering, fruiting, and leaf-shedding, are always going on in one Many of the woody lianas suspended from species or another. The activity of birds and trees, it is also to be observed, are not climb- insects proceed without interruption, each ers, but the air roots of epiphytous plants species having its own separate times. The (Aroideæ,) whose home is at the top of the colonies of wasps, for instance, do not die off forest, in the air, and has no connection with annually, leaving only the queens, as in cold the soil below-a forest above a forest. The climates; but the succession of generations epiphytes sit on the strong boughs of the and colonies goes on incessantly. It is never trees above, and hang down straight as either spring, summer, or autumn, but each plumb-lines. Some are suspended singly, day is a combination of all three. With the others in leashes; some reach half way to day and night always of equal length, the the ground, and others touch it, ultimately, atmospheric disturbances of each day neutraland then strike their rootlets into the ground.izing themselves before each succeeding morn; The underwood of the primeval forest varies much in different places; at times it is composed mainly of younger trees of the same species as their taller parents; at others, of palms of many species, some of them twenty to thirty feet in height; others small and delicate, with stems no thicker than a finger: then, again, of a most varied brushwood, or of striving interlacing climbing lianas. Tree ferns belong more to hilly regions and to the forests of the Upper Amazons. Of flowers there are few. Orchids are very rare in the dense forests of the low lands, and what flowering shrubs and trees there are, are inconspicuous. Flower-frequenting insects are, in consequence, also rare in the forest. The forest bees belonging to the genera Melipona and Euglossa, are more frequently seen feed-ing a uniform mass of green forest-a dome ing on the sweet sap which exudes from the trees, or on the excrement of birds on leaves, than on flowers.

with the sun in its course proceeding midway across the sky, and the daily temperature the same within two or three degrees throughout the year, how grand in its perfect equilibrium and simplicity is the march of Nature under such peculiar circumstances!

At break of day the sky is, for the most part, cloudless. The thermometer ranges from 72 to 73 deg. Fahr., which is not oppressive. The heavy dew, or the previous night's rain, which lies on the moist foliage, is quickly dissipated by the glowing sun, which rising straight out of the east, mounts rapidly towards the zenith. All nature is refreshed, new leaf and flower-buds expanding rapidly. Some mornings a single tree will appear in flower, amidst what was the preceding even

of blossoms suddenly created as if by magic. The birds all come into life and activity, and the shrill yelping of the toucans makes itself more especially heard. Small flocks of parrots take to wing, appearing in distinct relief against the blue sky, always two by two, chattering to each other, the pairs being separated by regular intervals; their bright colors, however, not apparent at that height. The only insects that appears in great numbers are ants, termites, and social wasps; and in the open grounds, dragon-flies.

The annual, periodical, and diurnal cycle of phenomena, in the primeval forest, are all worthy of notice. As in all intertropical regions, the season is pretty nearly always the same, and there is no winter and summer; the periodical phenomena of plant and animals do not take place at about the same time in all species, or in the individuals of any given species, as they do in temperate countries. Of course there is no hybernation, The heat increases rapidly up to two o'clock, nor, as the dry season is not excessive, is when the thermometer attains an average of there any estivation, as in some tropical | from 92 to 93 deg. Fahr., and by that time

to the ground. There are besides, many sounds which it is impossible to account for. Mr. Bates found the natives, generally, as much at a loss in this respect as himself. Sometimes a sound is heard like the clang of an iron bar against a hard, hollow tree, or a piercing cry rends the air; these are not repeated, and the succeeding silence tends to heighten the unpleasant impression which they make on the mind.

every voice of mammal or bird is hushed; sense of life and cheerfulness. Sometimes, in only on the trees the harsh whirr of the cicada the midst of the stillness, a sudden yell or is heard at intervals. The leaves, which scream will startle one; this comes from were so moist and fresh in early morning, be- some defenceless fruit-eating animal, which is come lax and drooping; the flowers shed their pounced upon by a tiger-cat or stealthy boapetals. The Indian and mulatto inhabitants constrictor. Morning and evening the howlof the open palm-thatched huts are either ing monkeys make a most fearful and harasleep in their hammocks or seated on mats rowing noise, under which it is difficult to in the shade, too languid even to talk. On keep up one's buoyancy of spirit. The feelmost days in June and July a heavy shower ing of inhospitable wildness, which the forest falls, sometimes in the afternoon, producing is calculated to inspire, is increased tenfold a most welcome coolness. The approach under this fearful uproar. Often, even in the of the rain-clouds is interesting to observe. still hour of mid-day, a sudden crash will be First the cool sea-breeze, which commenced heard, resounding afar through the wilderto blow about ten o'clock, and which had in-ness, as some great bough or entire tree falls creased in force with the increasing power of the sun, would flag, and finally die away. The heat and electric tension of the atmosphere then becomes almost insupportable. Languor and uneasiness seize on every one; even the denizens of the forest betraying it by their motions. White clouds appeared in the east; and gather into cumuli, with an increasing blackness along their lower portions. The whole eastern horizon becomes almost suddenly black, and this spreads upwards, the With the natives it is always the “Curusun at length becoming obscured. Then the pira" the wild man or Spirit of the Forest, rush of a mighty wind is heard through the which produces all noises they are unable to forest, swaying the tree-tops; a vivid flash account for. Myths are the rude theories of lightning bursts forth, then a crash of which mankind, in the infancy of knowledge, thunder, and down streams the deluging rain. invent to explain natural phenomena. The Such storms soon cease, leaving bluish-black" Curupira" is a mysterious being, whose atmotionless clouds in the sky until night. tributes are uncertain, for they vary accordMeantime all nature is refreshed; but heaps ing to locality. Sometimes he is described as of flower-petals and fallen leaves are seen un-a kind of uran-utan, being covered with long der the trees. Towards evening life revives shaggy hair, and living in trees. At others again, and the ringing uproar is resumed he is said to have cloven feet, and a bright from bush and tree. The following morning the sun rises in a cloudless sky, and so the cycle is completed; spring, summer, and autumn, as it were, in one tropical day. The days are, more or less, like this throughout the year. A little difference exists between the dry and wet seasons; but generally the dry season, which lasts from July to December, is varied with showers, and the wet from January to June, with sunny days.

We often read, in books of travels, of the silence and gloom of the primeval forest. They are-Mr. Bates adds his testimony to the fact-realities, and the impression, he says, deepens on a longer acquaintance. The few sounds of birds are of that pensive or mysterious character which intensifies the feeling of solitude rather than imparts a

red face. He has a wife and children, and has been even known to come down to the roças to steal the mandioco. "At one time," Mr. Bates relates, "I had a Mameluco (cross-breed) youth in my service, whose head was full of the legends and superstitions of the country. He always went with me into the forest; in fact, I could not get him to go alone, and whenever we heard any of the strange noises mentioned above, he used to tremble with fear. He would crouch down behind me, and beg of me to turn back. He became casy only after he had made a charm to protect us from the Curupira. For this purpose he took a young palm-leaf, plaited it, and formed it into a ring, which he hung to a branch on our track."

With all these drawbacks, there is plenty,

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