Mixed with them are “sandpaper leaves” with surfaces so rough that they are used locally for the same purpose as sheets of sandpaper elsewhere. Sinister hangman’s ropes swing, as if awaiting their victims, from branches along the jungle paths. Such are a few random notes from a cloudland jungle—in many ways like a forest of prehistoric days—in Venezuela’s Henry Pittier national forest. Here flourishes the giant tree fern, most characteristic tree of the vast ancient forests from which coal deposits were formed. In the tree fern fronds lurk worms and amphibians not vastly different from the tree creatures of the Devonian geological area. This is a forest of the central tropics. Paradoxically it is also, when seen from a little distance, a New England forest of late September with groves of straight, white-trunked palm trees which look like birches and patches of flame color in the treetops which look like maple leaves starting to put on their autumn coloring. The temperature, in fact, is about that of a warm Autumn day in New England, especially as dusk comes and a white veil of mist rolls over the mountaintops from the sea. The patches of flame color which look like maple leaves are orange and red blossoms of the gallito or “cock flowers,” so called because the bloom resembles so much the body of a miniature rooster. The gallito appears high in the treetops. It is about the most abundant and conspicuous flower of the cloud jungle. It grows on big, grey-trunked trees whose bark looks like rough-woven linen. Each blooming tree is filled with brilliantly colored humming birds and red and green parrots. Trees in the high jungle hills wear thick green overcoats of moss and lichens. There is one dark-green form of moss which grows about an inch high and looks like a miniature cedar leaf. Many of the older trees, especially palms, are “rusty” with a species of red lichen which spreads rapidly over the trunks. Among them is a blossoming tree with a straight, spined grey trunk from 30 to 40 feet high which is a close relative of the potato. The cloud forest is predominantly the home of the epiphytes, such as long, dangling masses of red, pink and pearl orchids which grow on the trees. They require plenty of moisture. In this mountain swamp the trees always are soaking wet. This is an ideal environment for the eight or ten varieties of moss which grow so luxuriantly. There are green-walled cave openings ten feet high and ten feet wide in the bottoms of the trunks of giant trees. Exposed roots lie across the paths, covered with moss in which there are leprous white spots. They look like enormous, writhing malevolent green serpents. _The Versatility of the Elephant’s Trunk_