The scented pod is far above, out of your reach; but not out of the reach of the next parrot, or monkey, or negro hunter, who winds the treasure.  And the stems themselves:  to what trees do they belong?  It would be absurd for one to try to tell you who cannot tell one-twentieth of them himself. {133f} Suffice it to say, that over your head are perhaps a dozen kinds of admirable timber, which might be turned to a hundred uses in Europe, were it possible to get them thither:  your guide (who here will be a second hospitable and cultivated Scot) will point with pride to one column after another, straight as those of a cathedral, and sixty to eighty feet without branch or knob.  That, he will say, is Fiddlewood; {133g} that a Carapo, {133h} that a Cedar, {133i} that a Roble {133j} (oak); that, larger than all you have seen yet, a Locust; {133k} that a Poui; {133l} that a Guatecare, {133m} that an Olivier, {133n} woods which, he will tell you, are all but incorruptible, defying weather and insects.  He will show you, as curiosities, the smaller but intensely hard Letter wood, {133o} Lignum vitae, {133p} and Purple heart. {134a} He will pass by as useless weeds, Ceibas {134b} and Sandbox-trees, {134c} whose bulk appals you.  He will look up, with something like a malediction, at the Matapalos, which, every fifty yards, have seized on mighty trees, and are enjoying, I presume, every different stage of the strangling art, from the baby Matapalo, who, like the one which you saw in the Botanic Garden, has let down his first air-root along his victim’s stem, to the old sinner whose dark crown of leaves is supported, eighty feet in air, on innumerable branching columns of every size, cross-clasped to each other by transverse bars.  The giant tree on which his seed first fell has rotted away utterly, and he stands in its place, prospering in his wickedness, like certain folk whom David knew too well.  Your guide walks on with a sneer.  But he stops with a smile of satisfaction as he sees lying on the ground dark green glossy leaves, which are fading into a bright crimson; for overhead somewhere there must be a Balata, {134d} the king of the forest; and there, close by, is his stem—­a madder-brown column, whose head may be a hundred and fifty feet or more aloft.  The forester pats the sides of his favourite tree, as a breeder might that of his favourite racehorse.  He goes on to evince his affection, in the fashion of West Indians, by giving it a chop with his cutlass; but not in wantonness.  He wishes to show you the hidden virtues of this (in his eyes) noblest of trees—­how there issues out swiftly from the wound a flow of thick white milk, which will congeal, in an hour’s time, into a gum intermediate in its properties between caoutchouc and gutta-percha.  He talks of a time when the English gutta-percha market shall be supplied from the Balatas of the northern hills, which cannot be shipped away as timber.  He tells