The explanation of this curious phenomenon depends upon the tendency just mentioned. On this site once stood a large tree of some other species, probably a cotton-tree (_Eriodendron_), or some other soft-timbered kind. The little scarlet berry of a Fig-tree was carried by some vagrant Banana-bird or Pigeon to its boughs, and there devoured. After the little truant had finished his morsel, he perhaps wiped his beak against the rough bark of the trunk, beside the branch on which he was seated. Some of the minute seeds, enveloped in mucilage, were thus left on the tree, which the rain presently washed down into the broad concavity of the forks, where, among moss and rotten leaves, it soon germinated and grew. The roots gradually crept down the trunk of the supporting tree, closely clinging to its bark, and by their interlacement at length formed a living case, enveloping it on every side, and penetrating the earth around its base. The growth of these, and also of the inclosed tree, daily induced a tighter and tighter pressure on the latter, which at length arrived at such a degree as to stop the circulation of the sap between the bark and the wood. Death, of course, was the result, and speedy decay reduced the supporting tree to a heap of mouldering dust: while the parasite, now able to maintain its own position by its hollow cone of roots, increased in size and strength, and overtopped its fellows of the forest;--_a tree standing upon stilts_. A few years ago I was struck with the appearance of an East Indian species of the same genus in one of the conservatories at Kew. Three shoots had run up the wall, clinging so close, that the leaves looked as if they were actually glued to the bricks, one over the other, in the most regular manner. Yet, on examination, I saw that the leaves did not adhere at all; the only support was that of the tiny rootlets which proceeded laterally from each stem, which the leaves concealed. The appearance of the whole was so curious, with the pale growing bud peeping out from beneath the topmost leaf, that I was greatly attracted by it. The base of the plant was in a pot, but the attendant informed me that this connexion was about to be cut off, by severing each shoot at the point where it first seized the wall. The leaves above this point, by their superior size and vigour, shewed that the plant was already independent of its pot, and that it was capable of supporting itself, like a proper air-plant, by imbibition from the atmosphere alone, needing nothing more than support in its upright position, which it obtained from the wall by its clinging aerial rootlets.