PDF - Wallace Online

n EQUATORIAL VEGETATION 245way on the .tops of these smaller trees overshadowed by thedense canopy above them they would be out of sight of bothgroups of insects ;but being placed openly on the stems, andin the greatest profusion, they cannot fail to attract the attentionof the wandering butterflies.Uses of Equatorial Forest TreesAmid this immense variety of trees, the natives have foundout such as are best adapted to certain purposes. The woodof some is light and soft, and is used for floats or for carvingrude images, stools, and ornaments for boats and houses. Theflat slabs of the buttresses are often used to make paddles.Some of the trees with furrowed stems are exceedingly strongand durable, serving as posts for houses or as piles on whichthe water -villages are built. Canoes, formed from a trunkhollowed out and spread open under the action of heat requireone kind of wood, those built up with planks another and as;the species of trees in these forests are so much more numerousthan the wants of a semi-civilised population, there areprobably a large number of kinds of timber which will someday be found to be well adapted to the special requirementsof the arts and sciences. The products of the trees of theequatorial forests, notwithstanding our imperfect knowledgeof them, are already more useful to civilised man than to theindigenous inhabitants. To mention only a few of those whosenames are tolerably familiar to us, we have such valuablewoods as mahogany, teak, ebony, lignum-vitae, purple -heart,iron- wood, sandal-wood, and satin-wood ;such useful gums asindia-rubber, gutta-percha, tragacanth, copal, lac, and dammar ;such dyes as are yielded by log-wood, brazil-wood, and sappanwood;such drugs as the balsams of Capivi and Tolu, camphor,benzoin, catechu or terra- japonica, cajuput oil, gamboge, quinine,Angostura bark, quassia, and the urari and upas poisons ;of spices we have cloves, cinnamon, and nutmegs ;and offruits, brazil-nuts, tamarinds, guavas, and the valuable cacao ;while residents in our tropical colonies enjoy the bread-fruit,avocado-pear, custard-apple, durian, mango, mangosteen, soursop,papaw, and many others. This list of useful productsfrom the exogenous trees alone of the equatorial forests,excluding those from the palms, shrubs, herbs, and creepers,