But what can be said of the jungle? Had we thought of gardens as suitably placed in tree-tops? Or of an edge of wood as sharp as an edge of steel? Here accustomed flowers grow as shrubs, and shrubs as trees. It is a region where insects are mistaken for birds, where animals imitate a flower on the branch where they like to rest; where plants have fragrance, and blossoms burst forth from roots or rough bark; where birds gain protection by assuming the dazzling colors of tropical sunlight, and butterflies by the warning colors of their neighbors. It is a region where roots grow in the air; oils, wax, and honey are secreted by leaves; where the death of anything gives new, vital impulse to something else, and parasites are as significant as their supporters. Curious region, where there are night-flying butterflies and softly-feathered moths to fly in the daytime; where everything is reversed: animals, whose normal is upside down, prefer tree-tops to the ground, birds of prey are frightened by the painting on a butterfly’s wings, caterpillars sting, spiders kill birds, and water is the principal element of the land. Dramatic indeed is the silent jungle. The insect is imprisoned in the throat of the orchid, whose honey it had been unwarily seeking. Trees distil venom. Plants have fangs. Perfumes affect the brain. Cold, green creepers blister like fire. From vampires which suck your blood as you sleep, to the touch of a vine which paralyzes your entire body, the jungle knows all modes of attack and furnishes the cure for every ill it has created. What can be taken as the symbol of the jungle? The snake, mysterious, deadly, bound together in savage traditions with lightning, wind, fire-streams of lava, and river-whirlpools, those emblems of serpent treachery? Or butterflies, with their symbolism of life-recurrent? Or the orchid, emblem of wayward unwholesomeness? In the troops of monkeys which skip, swing, bounce from tree to tree, throwing themselves to be caught by prehensile tails, is its exuberance. In the honey dripping from hollow trees and running off unused, is typified its surplus. Iridescence darting from insects and from birds, rainbows glinting over cataracts or caught by the equatorial sunshine from misty hillsides, might be its symbol; or the beneficence of jungle trees and bushes. Not one would be more or less typical than any other. All are equally emblematic. If we think of caprice, there is law; of life, there is death; of beauty, there is horror. When each seems most dominant, then its opposite is most uncontrolled. The seed dies that the plant may live; the blossom withers that the fruit may set; the worm vanishes that the butterfly may spread its wide wings and fly. Plus and minus signs are never far apart indeed. CONCLUSION