f the foliage is
almost frightful; where heat, moisture, and a most extraordinarily deep
and rich vegetable soil combine to produce wood of a fungus-like
softness, and an inconceivable abundance of twining plants and
epiphytes. In those forests, more especially where huge fig-trees
constitute the principal part of the timber, intermingled with the most
tropical forms of vegetation, such as _Sterculiaceae_, _Sapindaceae_, and
_Artocarpeae_, tufts of _Orchideae_ attain a vast size and luxuriance, in
company with Aroideous and Zinziberaceous plants.[228] In Demerara, Mr
Henchman found masses of _Oncidium altissimum_ and _Maxillaria Parkeri_
of wide dimensions, and so densely growing as to defy any attempt at
intrusion; and on the Spanish main he saw the _Epidendrum_ known as the
"Spread Eagle" clasping enormous trees, and covering them from the top
to the bottom.

The fig-trees, which are among the most gigantic of the tropical
forest-trees, and which support an immense profusion of epiphytes, are
themselves frequently parasitic and epiphyte in their early condition.
It is not uncommon in Jamaica to see a network of roots partially
embracing the trunk of some great tree, far up its column, and gradually
creeping round and downward. I have seen an old wall so covered,
presenting a very curious spectacle. The roots of a wide-spreading fig
growing out of the summit of the wall, had spread over its perpendicular
surface, down to the earth, all in the same plane, clinging to the wall;
the chief roots were as thick as a man's leg, but subordinate roots had
proceeded from one to another, anastomosing in all directions (if I may
use such a term), so as to make a most elaborate network of a multitude
of meshes of various angular forms and sizes. These cross-roots were _at
each extremity_ united with the larger roots, and looked as if the whole
network had been skilfully carved out of one solid plank of wood, by
cutting out the areas or meshes, and rounding the component bars; the
very bark that covered the whole was continuous, where the roots united,
as if they had been always integrally one.

The only mode in which I can account for this singular phenomenon is the
following hypothesis:--The seed of the tree was originally deposited on
the summit of the wall, beneath the eaves. As it germinated, the roots
ran down towards the earth, some perpendicularly, some diagonally; but
all creeping along the surface of the wall, no roots ha