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AMAZONIAN VEGETATION 363
reason to believe that there is no carnivorous animal
on the Amazon and Orinoco which does not occasion-
ally resort to vegetables, and especially to fruits, for
food not always of necessity, but often from choice.
When, however, we come to consider and compare
the distribution of the various classes and sub-
ordinate groups of animals, we see that the range
of a fruit-eating species or tribe can rarely correspond
to that of one which feeds on leaves, and
similarly of other pairs of differences or contrasts in
the nature of the food that, in short, the only
animals which can be expected to range from sea to
sea in a wide continent are a few general feeders
and their parasites, the larger beasts of prey, and
the scavengers, such as Vultures among birds (and
perhaps Termites among insects).
As to the distribution of the Lepidoptera in the
Amazon valley, it is plain that it can rarely corre-
spond to the grander features of the vegetation, for
the simple reason that the food of caterpillars is
scarcely ever the foliage, etc., of the loftier forest
trees, but chiefly of soft-leaved undershrubs and low
trees (i) which grow under the shade of the forest
and have, many of them, a restricted range; or (2)
which spring up where the primeval woods have
been destroyed, and in waste places near the habita-
tions of men, and whose range in many cases is co-
extensive at least with Cisandine Tropical America.
trees and the luxuriant herbs which
The bushy
border savannas and caatingas and broad forest
paths, and sometimes those which grow on the very
edge of streams, are also apt to be infested by cater-
pillars. Of about two thousand forest trees I have
had cut down in the Amazon region for the sake ol