Note 64 — THE FORMS AND COLOURS OF LIVING CREATURES.

There are climbers in Brazil, the roots of which, descending around the trunk of the tree supporting them, clasp the latter with such a deadly embrace that it dies and decays. In the meantime, the descending roots (having become fixed in the ground) swell and meet so as to form a new and irregularly-shaped trunk of solid wood, which has thus (by an inverted process) grown downwards instead of upwards. There are other such creepers in the East which have a wide-spreading downward growth (see Wallace’s “Malay Archipelago,” vol. i. p. 131).