A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL 



Our trees, therefore, need more leaves than the tropical trees. 

 And we find that in general the foliage of our trees is thicker than 

 that of the tropical trees, in which a mighty trunk is often sur- 

 mounted by a surprisingly small crown, so that one can usually 

 follow the ramifications of the boughs to the ends of the twigs. 

 Very often the boughs bear, on the tips of their twigs, only a thin, 

 domed disk of leaves (Plate ii). 



Similarly, the blossoming season of our plants is necessarily short, 

 while in the tropics not a month goes by but fresh plants open their 

 flowers. A host of meadow-flowers delights us in spring; but in the 

 tropics such a carpet of flowers will be sought in vain. In Europe 

 the simultaneous appearance of the leaves of the trees, as of the 

 flowers of the field, is a conspicuous characteristic. And this charac- 

 teristic is naturally more effective than the distribution of flowers 

 and foliage over the whole year, as in the tropics. 



When in early summer a European enters such a little covert as 

 we find, for example, on the Upper Rhine, and passing between 

 the scented billows of the hawthorn, musical with the song of birds, 

 pushes his way through thickets overgrown with honeysuckle and 

 briony, above which oak and ash and other trees spread their leafy 

 crowns, and at last comes to a clearing where orchids lift their 

 purple spires from the grass and a pheasant rockets up witli a 

 gaggling cry, he tells himself that this is a scene of tropical luxuriance ! 

 He imagines, at the Equator, a still denser confusion of greener and 

 lusher foliage, a still greater splendour of blossoms, a still more 

 intoxicating fragrance. But he who visits the tropics with such 

 hopes will inevitably be disappointed. For reasons already explained, 

 the tropical trees are far less rich in foliage than ours, and their 

 leaves are not so lush and green in appearance as those of a Euro- 

 pean wood. For the leaves of our trees let the sun shine through 

 them, but such behaviour would be dangerous in the case of the 

 tropical sun; in the tropics the leaves protect themselves by their 

 dense, leathery texture, and by a glossy upper surface, which 

 reflects the burning rays (Plate 15). And the third thing that we 

 imagine in connection with a tropical forest — the fragrance — is more 

 characteristic of our European woods. Of course, there are many 

 trees in equatorial countries which bear scented blooms, and many 

 orchids, but no scent of the tropics is as characteristic as the resinous 

 fragrance of our pine- and fir-woods. There are no conifers in the 

 tropics ; nor do the equatorial forests know the intoxicating odour 

 of the fallen leaves in the autumn woods. 



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