Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1890-07-25

flies, a honey-bee hovers over your hand I;
other forms of bees dash for your eyes
a wasp buzzes in your ear, huge hornet
menaces your face. an army of pismires
come marching up to your feet. Some
are already crawling up, and will pres
emily be digging their scissor-like mandi-
bles in your neck. Woe! Woe
And yet it is all beautiful-but there
must be no sitting or lying down on this
seething earth. 1t is not like your pine
groves and your dainty woods in Eng
land. 1t is tropic world, and to enjoy
it you must keep slowly moving.
Imagine the whole of France and the
lberian peninsula closely packed with
trees varying from 20 to $50 feet high,
whose crowns of foliage interlace and
prevent any view of sky or sun. and each
tree from few inches to four feet in di-
ameter. Then from tree to tree run ca
bes from two inches to Is inches in di-
ameter, up and down in loops and fes-
toons and WIS and badly-fcrmed Ms :;
fold them around the trees in great tight
coils, until they have run up the entire
hight, like endless anacondas; let them
flower and leaf luxuriantly and mix up
above with the foliage of the trees to
hide the sun, then from the highest
branches let fall the ends of the cables
reaching near to the ground by hundreds
with frayed extremities, for these repre-
sent the air roots of the epiphytes let
slender cords hang down also in tassels
with open thread-work at the ends. Work
Others through and through these as con-
fusedly as possible and pendant from
branch to branch-with absolute disre-
gard of material, and at every fork and
on every horizontal branch plant cabbage
lichens of the largest kind, and broad
spear-leaved plants-these would repre-
sent the elephant-eared plant-and or
chids and clusters of vegetable marvels
and drapery of delicate ferns which =
bound. Now cover tree, branch, twig
and creeper with thick moss like a
green fur. Where the forest is compact
as described above, we NAV not do more
than cover the ground closely with a
thick crop of phrynia and amoma, and
dwarf bush; but if the lightning, as FIRE.
quently happens, has severed the crown
of proud tree and let in the sunlight OF
split giant down to its roots, or scorch.
ed it dead, or tornado has been uproot.
ing a few trees, then the race for air and
light has caused a multitude of baby
trees to rush upward-crowded crushing
and treading upon and strangling one an
other, until the whole is one imperviou:
bush. To complete the mental pic
ture OF this ruthless forest, the ground
should be strewn thickly with half-form-
ed humus of rotting twgs, leaves, bran
ches. every few yards there should be 6
PROSTATE giant, a reeking compost of rot
ten tibres, and departed generations OF
insects, and colonies of ants, half veieC
with masses of vines and shrouded by the
LEAKAGE of multitude of baby sapings
lengthy briars and calamus in many
fathom lengths, and every mile or Sc
there should be muddy streams, stag
nant creeks, and shallow pools, greer
with duckweed, leaves of lotus and lilies
and greasy green scum composed o.
millions of finite growths. Then people
this vast region of woods with number
less fragments of tribes, who are at wal
with each other and who live apart from
10 to 80 miles in the midst of prostrat,
forest, among whose ruins they hav,
planted the plantain, banana, manioc
beans, tobacco, colocasia, gourds, melons
ETC., and who, in order to make their vii
lagos inaccessible, have resorted to every
means of defense suggested to wild mel
by the nature of their lives. They hav,
planted skewers along their paths, ant
cunningly hidden them under an appar
emily stray leaf, or on the lee side of ;
log, by striding over which the nake(
foot is pierced, and the intruder is either
killed by the poison smeared on the toI
of the skewers, or famed for months
They have piled up branches, and hay,
formed abattis of great trees, and they
lie in wait behind with sheaves of poison
ed arrows, wooden spears hardened il
fire, and smeared with poison.