Beauties of Tropical Vegetation.

— It is under the burning rays of a tropical sun that vegetation displays its most majestic forms.

In the cold north the bark of trees is covered with lichens and mosses, whilst between the tropics the cymbidium and fragrant vanilla enliven the trunks of the anacardia and of the gigantic fig-trees.

The fresh verdure of the pothos leaves, and of the dracontias, contrasts with the many-coloured flowers of the orchideæ.

Climbing banhinias, passifloras, and yellow flowering banisterias, twine round the trunks of the forest trees.

Delicate blossoms spring from the roots of the theobroma, and from the thick and rough bark of the crescentias and the gustavia.

In the midst of this profusion of flowers and fruits, and in the luxuriant interturnings of the climbing plants, the naturalist often finds it difficult to discover to which stem the different flowers and leaves really belong.

A single tree adorned with paullinias, bignonias, and dendrobium, form a group of plants which, if disentangled and separated from each other, would cover a considerable space of ground.

In the tropics vegetation is generally of a fresher verdure, more luxuriant and succulent, and adorned with larger and more shining leaves than in our northern climates.

The “social plants, which often impart so uniform and monotonous a character to European countries, are almost entirely absent in the equatorial regions.

Trees almost as lofty as our oaks are adorned with flowers as large and beautiful as our lilies.

On the shady banks of the Rio Madalena in South America, there grows a climbing aristolochia bearing flowers four feet in circumference, which the Indian boys draw over their heads in sport, and wear as hats or helmets.

In the islands of the Indian Archipelago, the flower of the rafflesia is nearly three feet in diameter, and weighs above fourteen pounds....

These and many other of the enjoyments which nature affords are wanting to the nations of the north.

Many constellations and many vegetable forms, and of the latter those which are the most beautiful, remain for ever unknown to them.

Individual plants languishing in our hot-house, can give a very faint idea of the majestic vegetation of the tropical zone.

But the high cultivation of our languages, the glowing fancy of the poet, and the imitative art of the painter, open to us sources whence flow abundant compensations, and from whence our imagination can derive the living image of that more vigorous nature which other climes display.

In the frigid north, in the midst of the barren heath, the solitary student can appropriate mentally all that has been discovered in the most distant regions, and can create within himself a world free and imperishable as the spirit by which it is conceived.— Humboldt’s Aspects of Nature.