In British Honduras the Mahogany-tree (_Swietenia Mahagoni_) is found scattered in the forests, attracting the woodman’s attention from a distance by its light-coloured foliage, and its magnificent growth. Such are its dimensions, and such is the value of peculiarly fine specimens, that in October 1823 a tree was felled which weighed more than seven tons, and at Liverpool was sold for 525_l._ The expense of sawing amounted to 750_l._ more: so that the wood of this single tree, before passing into the hands of the cabinet-maker, was worth as much as a moderately sized farm. ‘Heedless and bankrupt in all curiosity must he be,’ says Waterton,[14] ‘who can journey through the forests of Guiana without stopping to take a view of the towering Mora (_Mora excelsa_). Its topmast branch, when naked with age, or dried by accident, is the favourite resort of the toucan. Many a time has this singular bird felt the shot faintly strike him from the gun of the fowler beneath, and owed his life to the distance betwixt them. The wild fig tree, as large as a common English apple-tree, often rears itself from one of the thick branches at the top of the mora; and when its fruit is ripe, to it the birds resort for nourishment. It was to an indigested seed passing through the body of this bird, which had perched on the mora, that the fig tree first owed its elevated station there. The sap of the mora raised it into full bearing; but now, in its turn, it is doomed to contribute a portion of its own sap and juices towards the growth of different species of vines, the seeds of which also the birds deposited on its branches. These soon vegetate and bear fruit in great quantities; so, what with their usurpation of the resources of the fig-tree, and the fig-tree of the mora, the mora, unable to support a charge which Nature never intended it should, languishes and dies under its burden; and then the fig-tree and its usurping progeny of vines, receiving no more succour from their late foster-parent, droop and perish in their turn.’ Our stateliest oaks would look like pygmies near this chieftain of the forests,’ who raises his dark green cupola over all the neighbouring trees, and deceives the traveller, who fancies that a verdant hill is rising before him. Its wood is much firmer than that of the fir, and is, or will be, of great importance to the ship-builder. On the Upper Barima alone, a river of Guiana hardly even known by name in Europe, Schomburgk found the giant tree growing in such profusion that it could easily afford sufficient timber for the proudest fleet that ever rode the ocean. The graceful tapering form of the _Gramineæ_, or grasses, belongs to every zone; but it is only in the warmer regions of the globe that we find the colossal _Bambusaceæ_, rivalling in grandeur the loftiest trees of the primeval forest.