98 Mr. R. B. Hinds on Geographic Botany. 



whole vegetable world, whilst every plant claims equally the atten- 

 tion of the latter. 



It may be interesting to mention a difficulty of this kind which 

 I experienced ; and I shall give it in the same words I used at the 

 time, when a luxuriant tropic vegetation was before me, and the 

 impressions were fresh on the mind. After some experience 

 among tropical vegetation, the duties of my profession removed 

 me to high northern latitudes, and I thought a return to the 

 tropics a particularly favourable opportunity of seizing the more 

 prominent features, without the mind being induced to picture too 

 freely from the novelty of the subject. A portion of my remarks 

 was as follows : — " After looking on the vegetation of high lati- 

 tudes for some months past, I felt more alive on our return to 

 the tropics to the characteristic features of their vegetation. It 

 is very plain that this has peculiarities easily distinguishable by 

 the eye, but which it has puzzled me to find adequate language 

 to express. The most prominent circumstance is its superior 

 denseness, added to which there is, when looking on distant 

 masses, a roundness and fullness of outline not shared with floras 

 of other regions. Of course I now speak only of its pictorial 

 characters as seen from a distance, and the general features it is 

 capable of giving to a landscape. What are generally called 

 tropical views contain some near representation of particular ob- 

 jects, as palms, tree-ferns, &c., and form no part of what I wish 

 to express. I expected to find a greater richness of colouring, 

 but I do not discover that the tropical forests surpass in the least 

 the rich deep-green fir-forests of North-west America illumined 

 by a mid-day sun. The only ground of surpassing excellence is 

 the occasional variety of tints, and the green generally presents 

 that shade which artists obtain by a greater admixture of yellow.^^ 



Perhaps it is owing to the variety in the shades of green, 

 in plants of difierent latitudes and places, that artists have suc- 

 ceeded so well in representing them. Every region will offer 

 some difference in this, to some extent confined to itself. The 

 deep-green forests of the North are peculiar to them ; those of 

 the tropics have a yellower or more autumnal tint ; in the sub- 

 tropic regions the shade of colour of the leaves is of an olive-green; 

 maritime vegetation also has its glaucous hue. Physiologists have 

 attempted to account for these different tints : Mustel, Chevreul, 

 and Senebier represent that, though carbon is apparently black, 

 on examination it will really be found to be blue. The latter also 

 maintains that the vegetable tissue is not exactly white, but of a 

 pale yellow ; hence, as in similar cases, it is easy to comprehend 

 how the mixture of the blue and the yellow produces the green. 

 To support this opinion, he cites the green which is obtained by 



