h at length arrived at such a degree as to
stop the circulation of the sap between the bark and the wood. Death, of
course, was the result, and speedy decay reduced the supporting tree to
a heap of mouldering dust: while the parasite, now able to maintain its
own position by its hollow cone of roots, increased in size and
strength, and overtopped its fellows of the forest;--_a tree standing
upon stilts_.

A few years ago I was struck with the appearance of an East Indian
species of the same genus in one of the conservatories at Kew. Three
shoots had run up the wall, clinging so close, that the leaves looked as
if they were actually glued to the bricks, one over the other, in the
most regular manner. Yet, on examination, I saw that the leaves did not
adhere at all; the only support was that of the tiny rootlets which
proceeded laterally from each stem, which the leaves concealed. The
appearance of the whole was so curious, with the pale growing bud
peeping out from beneath the topmost leaf, that I was greatly attracted
by it. The base of the plant was in a pot, but the attendant informed me
that this connexion was about to be cut off, by severing each shoot at
the point where it first seized the wall. The leaves above this point,
by their superior size and vigour, shewed that the plant was already
independent of its pot, and that it was capable of supporting itself,
like a proper air-plant, by imbibition from the atmosphere alone,
needing nothing more than support in its upright position, which it
obtained from the wall by its clinging aerial rootlets.

Every one who has wandered in a primeval forest of the tropics, whether
in the eastern or the western hemisphere, has been struck by the
inconceivable profusion of the climbers and twiners with which the trees
are laced together. They are found from the thickness of a warship's
cable to that of pack-thread; the stronger ones often uncouthly twisted
together, and binding tree to tree. They are of the orders
_Malpighaceae_, _Apocyaneae_, _Asclepiadeae_, _Bignoniaceae_, &c., and often
are adorned with the most brilliant flowers.

I have before cited descriptions of these wonderful lianes, as they
occur in the forests of South America; my readers may like to peruse Sir
Emerson Tennent's graphic sketch of those of Ceylon:--

"It is the trees of older and loftier growth that exhibit the rank
luxuriance of these wonderful epiphytes in the most striking manner.
They are torme