PHYSI0GX0MY OF PLANTS. 229 



The form of Ferns (28), like that of grasses, also assumes 

 nobler dimensions in the torrid regions of the earth, and the 

 arborescent ferns, which frequently attain the height of above 

 forty feet, have a palm-like appearance, although their stem 

 is thicker, shorter, and more rough and scaly, than that of 

 the palm. The leaf is more delicate, of a loose and more 

 transparent texture, and sharply serrated on the margins. 

 These colossal ferns belong almost exclusively to the tropics, 

 but there they prefer the temperate localities. As in these 

 latitudes diminution of heat is merely the consequence of an 

 increase of elevation, we may regard mountains that rise 

 2000 or 3000 feet above the level of the sea as the prin- 

 cipal seat of these plants. Arborescent ferns grow in South 

 America, side by side with that beneficent tree whose stem 

 yields the febrifuge bark, and both forms of vegetation are 

 indicative of the hapi^y region where reigns the genial mild- 

 ness of perpetual spring. 



I have now to mention the form of the Liliaceous plants (29), 

 Amaryllis, Ixia, Gladiolus, and Pancratium, with their flag- 

 like leaves and splendid blossoms, the principal home of which 

 is Southern Africa; also the Willow form (30), which is 

 indigenous in all latitudes, and is represented in the plateaux 

 of Quito, not by the shape of its leaves, but in the form of its 

 ramification, in Schinus Molle ; also the Myrtle-form (31) 

 {Metrosideros, Eucalyptus, Escallonia myrtelloides) ; Melas- 

 tomacea3 (32); and the Laurel form (33). 



It would be an undertaking worthy of a great artist to 

 study the character of all these vegetable groups, not in hot- 

 houses, or from the descriptions of botanists, but on the grand 

 theatre of tropical nature. How interesting and instructive to 

 the landscape painter (34) would be a work that should present 

 to the eye accurate delineations of the sixteen principal forms 

 enumerated, both individually and in collective contrast! 

 What can be more picturesque than the arborescent Ferns, 

 which spread their tender foliage above the Mexican lam-el- 



