England's hands against the freedom of
the world elsewhere;" she would share, and rightly share the fate of
the parasite growth that, having gripped her trunk so tightly, has
by that aid reached the sunlight. The British Empire is no northern
oak tree. It is a creeping, climbing plant that has fastened on the
limbs of others and grown great from a sap not its own. If we seek an
analogy for it in the vegetable and not in the animal world we must
go to the forests of the tropics and not to the northland woodlands.
In the great swamps at the mouth of the Amazon the naturalist Bates
describes a monstrous liana, the "Sipo Matador" or Murdering Creeper,
that far more fitly than the oak tree of the north typifies John Bull
and the place he has won in the sunlight by the once strong limbs of
Ireland.

Speaking of the forests round Para, Bates says:--"In these tropical
forests each plant and tree seems to be striving to outvie its
fellows, struggling upwards towards light and air--branch and leaf
and stem--regardless of its neighbours. Parasitic plants are seen
fastening with firm grip on others, making use of them with reckless
indifference as instruments for their own advancement. Live and let
live is clearly not the maxim taught in these wildernesses. There is
one kind of parasitic tree very common near Para which exhibits this
feature in a very prominent manner. It is called the "Sipo Matador,"
or Murderer Liana. It belongs to the fig order, and has been described
and figured by Von Martius as the Atlas to Spix and Martius' Travels.
I observed many specimens. _The base of its stem would be unable
to bear the weight of the upper growth_; it is obliged therefore
to support itself on a tree of _another species_. In this it is not
essentially different from other climbing trees and plants, but the
way the Matador sets about it is peculiar and produces certainly a
disagreeable impression. It springs up close to the tree on which it
intends to fix itself, and the wood of its stem grows by spreading
itself like a plastic mould over one side of the trunk of its
supporter. It then puts forth, from each side, an armlike branch,
which grows rapidly, and looks as though a stream of sap were flowing
and hardening as it went. This adheres closely to the trunk of the
victim, and the two arms meet at the opposite side and blend together.
These arms are put forth at somewhat regular intervals in mounting
upwards, and the victim, when its s