There is none now to disturb and plunder the hasty birds.
STEALTHY MURDERERS
The fig-tree which aids the BAEA in its object of beautifying the
precipice is one of a very numerously represented species, which assumes
great variety of form, and produces fruit of varying quality. This
particular variety (FICUS CUNNINGHAMII) begins life as a parasite. A
thin slender shoot, tremulously weak, leans lightly on the base of some
tall tree, and finding agreeable conditions, clings and grows. A
harmless, tender, thong-like shoot it is--a helpless plant, that could
not stand alone or exist but for the hospitality of another of strength
and substance. Soon a second shoot, slight and frail, emerges near the
root, but at a different angle from its aspiring brother, and others as
delicate as the first follow, until the trunk of the host is sprawled
over by naked running shoots, grey-green in colour, crafty and
insidious. As they increase in age the shoots flatten on the under
surface and cross and recross. Wheresoever they touch they coalesce. The
trunk becomes enveloped in living lace--in a network, rather, living,
ever growing and irregular--the meshes of which gradually decrease in
dimension.
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