Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/73

 organs of fructification. All species entail in their successful struggles the injury or destruction of many of their neighbours or supporters, but the process is not in others so speaking to the eye as it is in the case of the Matador. The efforts to spread their roots are as strenuous in some plants and trees, as the struggle to mount upwards is in others. From these apparent strivings result the buttressed stems, the dangling air roots, and other similar phenomena. The competition amongst organised beings has been prominently brought forth in Darwin's "Origin of Species;" it is a fact which must be always kept in view in studying these subjects. It exists everywhere, in every zone, in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. It is doubtless most severe, on the whole, in tropical countries, but its display in vegetable forms in the forest is no exceptional phenomenon. It is only more conspicuously exhibited, owing perhaps to its affecting principally the vegetative organs—root, stem, and leaf—whose growth is also stimulated by the intense light, the warmth, and the humidity. The competition exists also in temperate countries, but it is there concealed under the external appearance of repose which vegetation wears. It affects, in this case, perhaps more the reproductive than the vegetative organs, especially the flowers, which it is probable are far more general decorations in the woodlands of high latitudes than in tropical forests. This, however, is a difficult subject, and one which requires much further investigation.

I think there is plenty, in tropical nature, to counteract any unpleasant impression which the reckless