62 TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



and when these are seen from an elevated point looking 

 over an expanse of tree-tops the effect is very grand ; 

 but nothing is more erroneous than the statement some- 

 times made that tropical forest-trees generally have 

 showy flowers, for it is doubtful whether the proportion 

 is at all greater in tropical than in temperate zones. On 

 such natural exposures as steep mountain sides, the 

 banks of rivers, or ledges of precipices, and on the 

 margins of such artificial openings as roads and forest 

 clearings, whatever floral beauty is to be found in the 

 more luxuriant parts of the tropics is exhibited. But 

 even in such favourable situations it is not the abund- 

 ance and beauty of the flowers but the luxuriance 

 and the freshness of the foliage, and the grace and 

 infinite variety of the forms of vegetation, that will 

 most attract the attention and extort the admiration 

 of the traveller. Occasionally indeed you will come 

 upon shrubs gay w r ith blossoms or trees festooned with 

 flowering creepers ; but, on the other hand, you may travel 

 for a hundred miles and see nothing but the varied 

 greens of the forest foliage and the deep gloom of its 

 tangled recesses. In Mr. Belt's Naturalist in Nica- 

 ragua, he thus describes the great virgin forests of that 

 country which, being in a mountainous region and on 

 the margin of the equatorial zone, are among the most 

 favourable examples. " On each side of the road great 

 trees towered up, carrying their crowns out of sight 

 amongst a canopy of foliage, and with lianas hanging 

 from nearly every bough, and passing from tree to tree, 

 entangling the giants in a great network of coiling 

 cables. Sometimes a tree appears covered with beautiful 

 flowers which do not belong to it, but to one of the lianas 



