Beautiful Flowering Trees.

—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 as beautiful as our lilies.

On the shady banks of the Rio Magdalena in South America, there glows a climing 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 14 pounds.— Humboldt’s Aspects of Nature.