THE NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS 



IN THE 



PRIMEVAL FOREST. 



If the faculty of appreciating nature, in different races of 

 man, and if the character of the countries they now inhabit, 

 or have traversed in their earlier migrations, have more or 

 less enriched the respective languages by appropriate terms, 

 expressive of the forms of mountains, the state of vegetation, 

 the appearances of the atmosphere, and the contour and 

 grouping of the clouds, it must be admitted that by long 

 use and literary caprice many of these designations have been 

 diverted from the sense they originally bore. Words have 

 gradually been regarded as synonymous, which ought to have 

 remained distinct; and languages have thus lost a portion of 

 the expressiveness and force which might else have imparted 

 a physiognomical character to descriptions of natural scenery. 

 As an evidence of the extent to which a communion with 

 nature, and the requirements of a laborious nomadic life, 

 may enrich language, I would recall the abundance of 

 characteristic denominations employed in Arabic and Persian, 

 to distinguish plains, steppes, and deserts (1), according as 

 they are entirely bare, covered with sand, or intersected by 

 tabular masses of rock; or as they are diversified by spots 

 of pasture land and extended tracts of social plants. The 

 old Castilian dialects are no less remarkable (2) for the 

 copiousness of their terms descriptive of the physiognomy 

 of mountains, especially in reference to those features which 

 recur in all regions of the earth, and which proclaim afar 



