fifteen or twenty years after the cutting of the original forest,
but here there is much more evidence of rapid growth. A few
species of bushes and trees may remain green throughout the year,
but during the dry season most of the jungle plants lose their
leaves, at least in part.

With every mile that one advances into the more rainy interior,
the jungle becomes greener and fresher, the density of the lower
growths increases, and the proportion of large trees becomes
greater until finally jungle gives place to genuine forest. There
many of the trees remain green throughout the year. They rise to
heights of fifty or sixty feet even on the borders of their
province, and at the top form a canopy so thick that the ground
is shady most of the time. Even in the drier part of the year
when some of the leaves have fallen, the rays of the sun scarcely
reach the ground until nine or ten o'clock in the morning. Even
at high noon the sunlight straggles through only in small
patches. Long, sinuous lianas, often queerly braided, hang down
from the trees; epiphytes and various parasitic growths add their
strange green and red to the complex variety of vegetation. Young
palms grow up almost in a day and block a trail which was hewn
out with much labor only a few months before. Wherever the death
of old trees forms an opening, a thousand seedlings begin a
fierce race to reach the light. Everywhere the dominant note is
intensely vigorous life, rapid growth, and quick decay.

In their effect on man, the three forms of tropical forest are
very different. In the genuine rain forest agriculture is almost
impossible. Not only does the poor native find himself baffled in
the face of Nature, but the white man is equally at a loss. Many