hostile.  Not only are there prickles on the 10-feet thongs, but the leaves and leaf-sheaths are thickly beset.  In one species the 6-feet-long leaves bear upon the margins and upper surface long, thin, needle-like points, black and glossy, and attaining a length Of 3 inches; the main rib bears stout re-curved prickles, while the sheaths which envelop the cane are densely covered with dark brown or black points 1 inch and more long.

One cannot cut jungle and escape bloodshed, for the long tentacles of the lawyer catch you unawares sooner or later, and then, for all are set with double rows of re-curved points, do not endeavour to escape by strife and resistance—­it is no use pulling against those pricks—­but by subtlety and diplomacy.  The more you pull, the worse for your skin and clothes; but with tact you may become free, with naught but neat scratches and regular rows of splinters.  The points of the hooks to which you have been attached anchor themselves deep in the skin, and tear their way out and rip and rend your clothes, and your condition of mind, body and estate, is all for the worse.

But the uses of the lawyer cane are many and various.  Blacks employ it as ropes, as stays for canoes, and, split into narrow threads and woven, for baskets and fish-traps; and white men find it handy for all sorts of purposes, from boat-painters and fenders to stock-whip and maul-handles.  Suppose a tree that a black wishes to climb presents difficulties low down, he will procure a length of lawyer cane, partly biting and partly breaking it off, if he lacks a cutting implement.  Then he will make a loop, so bruising and chewing the end that it becomes flexible and ties almost as readily and quite as securely as rope.  Ascending a neighbouring tree, he will manoeuvre one end over a limb of that which he wishes to climb, and slip it through the loop, and run it up until it is fast.  A cane 50 feet long, no thicker than one’s little finger, fastened to the upper branch of a tree, has on trial borne the weight of three fairly-sized men.  Thus tested, the black has no hesitation or difficulty in rapidly ascending, and in lowering down young birds, or eggs (wrapped in leaves), or whatsoever his quest.

Another cane-producing plant (FLAGELLARIA), though innocent of the means of grappling, succeeds in overtopping tall trees and smothering them with a mass of interwoven leafage.  Each of its narrow leaves ends in a spiral tendril, sensitive but tough, which entwines itself about other leaves and twigs.  Feeling their respective ways, the tender tips of leaves of the one family touch and twist, and the grasp is for life.  Though not of such extravagant character as the lawyer vine, the FLAGELLARIA seems to be endowed with perceptive faculty almost amounting to instinct in selecting the shortest way toward the support necessary for its plan of existence, which is to climb not to grovel.  It spurns the ground.  New shoots spring from old rhizomes in the clearings, and turn