A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL 



broken, exude a white milky sap; but in Brazil we find among 

 the Euphorbiaceae the tall rubber-trees, the Para caoutchouc tree 

 or Seringueira, and the Ceara caoutchouc tree, or Manicoba, whose 

 milk, when it oozes from incisions in the bark, congeals in the form 

 of rubber. The Andaassii tree of the coastal provinces, the kernel of 

 whose large stone-fruit yields a powerful cathartic, is in high favour 

 as a shade tree by reason of its size and its many branches. And the 

 family of the Leguminosae, the second largest family of the flowering 

 trees, containing no less than 12,000 species, whose representatives 

 in Europe are peas, beans and vetches — if we except the acacia and 

 laburnum and robinia, trees which were introduced from North 

 America — this family, in Brazil, has produced the most magnificent 

 trees, which give many of the forests their individual character. 

 Among them are the Ingas or ironwood-trees, certain Jacarandas, 

 the Jatobas, Arirabas, Angicos, etc. 



Thus it is that the famous botanical garden of Rio de Janeiro 

 is above all a park or arboretum, in which the trees play the principal 

 part. And in the botanical garden of Peradeniya in Ceylon I even 

 saw the employees grazing their cattle — a quite unimaginable sight 

 in any European garden! 



Even from the outside the tropical forest reveals its wealth of 

 species. Each one of its many kinds of tree has its individual mode 

 of growth, and when we see the forest in the distance, over the 

 low hills of the coastal landscape of north-eastern Brazil, its outline 

 is serrated and irregular; here the trees lift themselves high against 

 the sky, there they are lower; this tree is tall and slender, that 

 outspreads a spherical crown, and above them all the great and 

 spacious Leguminosae lift their spreading umbrella-shaped summits 

 (Plates 12, 23, 30). 



How uniform in comparison is the outline of a European wood ! 

 In the German forests, of course, the trees are mostly of the same 

 age, and therefore of the same height, and only a few species are 

 allowed to grow; often only two, and sometimes even only one. 

 But in the last virgin mountain forest which is left to us, that of 

 Kubany in the Bohmerwald, which has never been touched by the 

 axe, I have noted that under natural conditions trees of the same 

 species assume a great variety of forms. Here the spruce predominates, 

 but while one tree, whose neighbours, broken with age, have fallen 

 to the ground, is able to grow in freedom into a noble pyramidal 

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