The remarkable tropical growth is shown in the myriad lianas, or creepers, which often bind the mass together, overgrowing even the tallest trees. The traveller who has had to cut his way through these networks of vegetation can best understand their impenetrability. Above his head may tower that monarch of the forest the "Cow-tree," or Massaranduba. This remarkable tree takes its name from the milk, or milky sap, it yields--a latex used in rubber-curing and for medicinal purposes. The timber is valuable for shipbuilding, and is also esteemed by railway-builders for sleepers, the wood being highly resistant, whether in air or water. Here, too, the mighty cedar rises amid its neighbours, growing to an immense height; its great trunk a hundred feet to its first branch. The wood is light, strong, and susceptible of a high polish and is valued for these qualities for many purposes. Here is another tree we shall view with a special interest in these forest fastnesses. We shall regard it with such interest not only for its great height--for it is one of the loftiest on the Amazon--but by reason of its familiar product, as it is that which produces the Brazil nut. The tree, however, will not be crowded by its neighbours, loving the open ground. It is slender relatively for its height, perhaps three or four feet in trunk diameter. Of the two varieties one is known as the Bertholetra, the other the Sapucaya. The collector of Brazil nuts will have a care not to approach the trees in a high wind, that is when the nuts are ripe. For the nuts, enclosed in their capsule or covering, are as hard and heavy as a small cannon-ball, and will certainly crack his crown if by mischance one falls upon his head. Prudently he waits until the pod falls, or, opening the lid with which Nature has furnished it, flings the enclosed nuts abroad, where they may be gathered. Many nuts, however, are wasted in this dispersal. The only capital required by the nut-gatherer is that involved in the ownership of a boat. In view of the appreciation of the Brazil nut in foreign lands, and its high price, the industry of its gathering, it would be supposed, might have been more extensive. The monarch, in a commercial sense, of the Amazon forests is the rubber, the beautiful _Hevea_ and others. These have their own special habitat. They are not found anywhere, but are solitary in their nature.