Most of us, if possessed of imaginative faculties, have been impressed in our youth by the thought of those vast virgin forests of South America, inhabited, as we often used to think, only by huge boa-constrictors and anacondas which lived to an immense age and continued to grow throughout their lifetime; and even in later years, when experience at first or second hand has taught us that the supposed silent forest of the tropics is generally noisy with the chattering of monkeys and birds or the perpetual hum and chirp of insects, and is often far from a desirable place on account of these last, the glamour of the vastness and fertility of these great untrodden temples of nature remains with us. More than half of Venezuela is covered by forest, and, indeed, comes within the forest area of South America; what botanical treasures and zoological curiosities may yet be discovered, when some explorer is found to succeed Humboldt and Schomburgk, are not to be guessed at, and it is not our purpose to give a scientific account of what has been done towards classifying and enumerating the many plants and animals already known to live in Venezuela, but to briefly describe what is most interesting and important to the general reader who may be interested in the country as a whole. Richest in quantity, and probably in variety, of vegetable life is the little-known land of Guayana, with its vast forests, hot climate, and heavy rainfall. Within it the plants range from the alpine shrubs and reindeer moss of some of the higher plateaux and hills to the bamboos and orchids of the river banks. The simile which compares the tropical forest to those darkened lofty cathedrals of Europe has been often used, and is, perhaps, somewhat trite, but its aptness is incontrovertible. The huge timber-trees grow fairly close together, and their spreading tops, fifty, eighty, or a hundred feet from the ground, with the abundant hanging lianes and flowering creepers, keep all but a feeble light from the ground, whence it comes that the under-growth is usually sparse or absent, and progress on foot is comparatively easy. Sometimes, however, there are stretches of _bejucal_, full of tangled ground creepers, and it may take a day to cut a path for one mile through such growth as this.