Chapter XIV 



VEGETATIONAL TYPES OF TROPICAL 

 AND ADJACENT LANDS 



In the last two chapters we dealt with the main types of land 

 vegetation found in temperate and polar and some adjacent or allied 

 regions. It now remains for us to complete this survey of vegeta- 

 tional types developed on the land of the w'orld with some con- 

 sideration of those of tropical and adjacent regions. This considera- 

 tion will be a mere brief outline that can scarcely do justice to the 

 range of types that includes the most luxuriant, complicated, and 

 often changeable vegetation on earth. Nevertheless one hopes it 

 may help relate some of these types to those of other regions, and 

 at least assist the inhabitant of the latter in his appreciation of what 

 is found in the tropics. 



Tropical Rain Forests 



These, especially in equatorial regions, constitute the most 

 luxuriant of all vegetation-types. They occur chiefly where soil 

 conditions are favourable in moist tropical lowlands and where 

 there is scarcely a distinct (or at all events no long and severe) dry 

 season. Their chief development is : (a) in the Amazonian region 

 of South America, whence they range northwards in the Caribbean 

 and Gulf of Mexico regions to nearly the Tropic of Cancer, south- 

 wards past the Tropic of Capricorn in Brazil, and westwards to the 

 Pacific Ocean coast of Colombia and Ecuador ; (b) about the 

 P^quator in central and w^estern Africa, extending southwards past 

 the Tropic of Capricorn in eastern Africa and Madagascar ; (c) in 

 western India and Ceylon ; and {d) in the Malayan region whence 

 they range north to the Himalayas, northeast to Indo-China and 

 the Philippines, and south and east through much of Indonesia and 

 New Guinea to Fiji and adjacent archipelagos of the western 

 Pacific, with an intermittent extension in eastern Australia well 

 past the Tropic of Capricorn. These are the regions in which 

 tropical rain forest appears to be the natural climax under present 



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