Thus we find that while without moisture no tree could exist, yet the same element often brings death. The amphibious mangroves which fringe the coral islands of the southern seas hardly attain to the dignity of trees, but in the mysterious depths of our southern swamps we find the strangely picturesque cypresses, which defy the waters about them. One cannot say where trunk ends and root begins, but up from the stagnant slime rise great arched buttresses, so that the tree seems to be supported on giant six- or eight-legged stools, between the arches of which the water flows and finds no chance to use its power. Here, in these lonely solitudes,--heron-haunted, snake-infested,--the hanging moss and orchids search out every dead limb and cover it with an unnatural greenness. Here, great lichens grow and a myriad tropical insects bore and tunnel their way from bark to heart of tree and back again. Here, in the blackness of night, when the air is heavy with hot, swampy odours, and only the occasional squawk of a heron or cry of some animal is heard, a rending, grinding, crashing, breaks suddenly upon the stillness, a distant boom and splash, awakening every creature. Then the silence again closes down and we know that a cypress, perhaps linking a trio of centuries, has yielded up its life. Leaving the hundred other mysteries which the trees of the tropics might unfold, let us consider for a moment the danger which the tall, successful tree invites,--the penalty which it pays for having surpassed all its other brethren. It preeminently attracts the bolts of Jove and the lesser trees see a blinding flash, hear a rending of heart wood, and when the storm has passed, the tree, before perfect in trunk, limbs, and foliage, is now but a heap of charred splinters. Many a great willow overhanging the banks of a wide river could tell interesting tales of the scars on its trunk. That lower wound was a deep gash cut by some Indian, perhaps to direct a war-party making their way through the untrodden wilderness; this bare, unsightly patch was burnt out by the signal fire of one of our forefather pioneers. And so on and on the story would unfold, until the topmost, freshly sawed-off limb had for its purpose only the desire of the present owner for a clearer view of the water beyond.