other as he passes. The number and variety of climbing trees in
the Amazons forests are interesting, taken in connection with the
fact of the very general tendency of the animals, also, to become
climbers.

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 Gallinaceous 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 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. Many other similar instances could be
enumerated, but I will mention only the Geodephaga, or
carnivorous ground beetles, a great proportion of whose genera
and species in these forest regions are, by the structure of
their feet, fitted to live exclusively on the branches and leaves
of trees.

Many of the woody lianas suspended from trees are not climbers,
but the air-roots of epiphytous plants (Aroideae), which sit on
the stronger boughs of the trees above and hang down straight as
plumb-lines. Some are suspended singly, others in clusters; some
reach halfway to the ground and others touch it, striking their
rootlets into the earth. The underwood in this part of the forest
was composed partly of younger trees of the same species as their
taller neighbours, and partly of palms of many species, some of
them twenty to thirty feet in height, others small and delicate,