CULTIVATION OF EXOTIC PI ANTS. 99 



CULTIVATION OF TROPICAL PLANTS— CONTRAST AND ASSEMBLAGE 

 OF VEGETABLE FORMS.—IMPRESSIONS INDUCED BY THE PHYSIOG 

 NOMY AND CHARACTER OF THE VEGETATION. 



Landscape painting, notwithstanding the multiplication of 

 its productions by engravings, and by the recent improvements 

 in lithography, is still productive of a less powerful effect than 

 that excited in minds susceptible of natural beauty by the im- 

 mediate aspect of groups of exotic plants in hot-houses or in 

 gardens. I have already alluded to the subject of my ov/n 

 youthful experience, and mentioned that the sight of a colossal 

 dragon-tree and of a fan palm in an old tower of the botanical 

 garden at Berlin implanted in my mind the seeds of an irre- 

 sistible desire to undertake distant travels. He who is able 

 to trace through the whole course of his impressions that which 

 gave the first leading direction to his Avhole career, will not 

 deny the influence of such a power. 



I would here consider the different impression produced by 

 the picturesque arrangement of plants, and their association 

 for the purposes of botanical exposition ; in the first place, by 

 groups distinguished for their size and mass, as Musacese and 

 HeliconicB, growing in thick clumps, and alternating with 

 Corypha palms, Araucarise, and Mimosse, and moss-covered 

 trunks, from which shoot forth Dracontia, delicately-leavecl 

 Ferns, and richly-blossoming Orchidea3 ; and, in the next, by 

 an abundance of separate lowly plants, classed and cultivated 

 in rows for the purpose of affording instruction in descriptive 

 and systematic botany. In the first case, our attention is 

 challenged by the luxuriant development of vegetation in 

 Cecropise, Caroliniss, and light, feathery Bamboos ; by the 

 picturesque association of the grand and noble forms which 

 embellish the shores of the Upper Orinoco, the wooded banks 

 of the Amazon, or of the Huallaga, so vividly and admirably 

 described by Martins and Edward Poppig ; and by the senti- 

 ment of longing for the lands in which the current of life flows 

 more abundantly and richly, and of whose beauty a faint but 

 still pleasing image is reflected to the mind by means of oui 

 hot-houses, which originally served as mere nurseries for sick* 

 ly plants. 



It undoubtedly enters within the compass of landscape 

 painting to afford a richer and more complete picture of na- 

 ture than the most skillfully-arranged grouping of cultivated 

 plants is able to present, since this branch of art exercises an 

 almost magical command over masses and forms. Almost 



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