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Besides the bull's-horn acacias, I, however, only met with two other genera of plants that furnished the ants with houses, namely the Cecropiae and some of the Melastomae. I have no doubt that there are many others. The stem of the Cecropia, or trumpet tree, is hollow, and divided into cells by partitions that extend across the interior of the hollow trunk.
The hill on the slope that we descended was covered with a forest resembling that around Santo Domingo, though the trees were not so large; but tree-ferns, palms, lianas, and broad-leaved Heliconiae and Melastomae were again abundant.
No lianas hang from the trees, and, excepting a few narrow-leaved Tillandsias, no epiphytes nestle on the branches and trunks. Below, instead of shrubby palms, large-leaved heliconias, and curious melastomae, the ground was bare and brown from the fallen leaves of the pines, excepting that in some places light grass had sprung up; in others the common bracken-fern of Europe.
Great broad-leaved heliconiae, leathery melastomae, and succulent-stemmed, lop-sided-leaved begonias are abundant, and typical of tropical American forests. Not less so are the cecropia trees, with their white stems and large palmated leaves standing up like great candelabra.
As we proceeded up the river, the banks gradually became higher and drier, and we passed some small plantations of bananas and plantains made in clearings in the forest, which now consisted of a great variety of dicotyledonous trees with many tall, graceful palms; the undergrowth being ferns, small palms, Melastomae, Heliconiae, etc.
I noticed three different species, all, as far as I know, confined to the Cecropiae, and all farming scale-insects. As in the bull's-horn thorn, there is never more than one species of ant on the same tree. In some species of Melastomae there is a direct provision of houses for the ants.
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