80 ^wxTSJ^:nRA t. 



a richnoss which, small as it is, vanishes as "we travel north- 

 ward, till the drear landscape is sheeted more and more with 

 monotonous multitudes of heather, grass, fir, or other social 

 plants. But even in tlie Tropics the virgin forest, beautiful 

 as it is, is without doulit much less beautiful, both in form and 

 colours, than it might be made. AVithout doubt, also, a mere 

 clearing, after a few years, is a more beautiful place than 

 the forest ; because by it distance is given, and you are 

 enabled to see the sky, and the forest itself beside ; because 

 new plants, and some of them very handsome ones, are intro- 

 duced by cultivation, or spring up in the rastrajo ; and 

 lastlv, but not least, because the forest on the edqe of the 

 clearing is able to feather down to the ground, and change 

 what is at first a bare tangle of stems and boughs into a 

 softly rounded bank of verdure and flowers. AMien, in some 

 future civilization, the art which has produced, not merely a 

 Chatsworth or a Dropmore, but an average English shrubbery 

 or park, is brought to bear on tropic vegetation, then Xature, 

 always willing to obey when conquered by fair means, will 

 produce such effects of form and colour around tropic estates 

 and cities as we cannot fancy for ourselves. 



Mr. "Wallace laments (and rightly) the absence in the tropic 

 forests of such grand masses of colour as are supplied by a 

 heather moor, a furze or broom-croft, a field of yellow char- 

 lock, blue bugloss, or scarlet poppy. Tropic landscape gar- 



