Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/27

Rh These included species of Polypodium and Vittaria. This poverty of the fern flora is quite in accord with the account given by Spruce of the forests of the lower Amazon.

Through the kindness of Dr. Cramer, the director of agriculture, and other members of the scientific staff, an opportunity was afforded of visiting a number of the most characteristic regions within reach of Paramaribo, and an excellent idea was thus obtained of the more salient features of the flora of this region. Excursions were made up the Surinam River and some of its tributaries, as well as to one of the characteristic "savannas" occasionally met with in lower Surinam.

Except in the immediate vicinity of Paramaribo there are no roads, and communication (except for one line of railway) is almost entirely by means of boats, which ply along the rivers, creeks and canals with which the whole country is intersected.

Owing to the flatness of the country, the tide extends for a long way up the larger streams, and these rivers are everywhere bordered by an impenetrable mangrove swamp, in the lower reaches of the rivers composed almost exclusively of Rhizophora mangle, but higher up, where the salinity of the water is less, the Ehizophora is gradually replaced by Avicennia nitida, which sometimes becomes a large tree, whose aerial roots often develop from the upper branches and reach an enormous length. Back of the mangrove belt there sometimes occur slightly elevated ridges upon which the largest trees grow.

Nearly all of the cultivated land in lower Surinam has been reclaimed by building dykes, and the old sluice gates, two or three hundred years old, in some cases, are a characteristic feature in the landscape.

Two of the large plantations were visited, and an opportunity was thus given of seeing the methods in use in the cultivation of the various tropical productions of Surinam—cocoa, coffee, oranges, bananas, cassava, rubber, etc. On one estate there were extensive plantations of Para rubber (Hevea braziliensis), and the somewhat primitive, but apparently satisfactory, preparation of the sheets of merchantable rubber could be seen in all stages.

In these large plantations the canals intersecting them in various directions were the principal means of communication, although along the dykes were usually footpaths, which were not always, however, in the best of condition—especially when the clay was slippery after one of the frequently recurring showers.

As the salinity of the water decreases in the upper reaches of the rivers, the mangrove formation is gradually replaced by other trees and shrubs. Several Leguminosæ, especially species of Inga, are common, and great numbers of a big Arum (Montrichardia arborescens),