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forests become more extensive, affording shelter, and grassy plains spread forth 



their attractive green, affording food to different kinds of oxen and deer, so 



follows their destroyer, the wolf ; the skilful beaver and the gossiping prairie dog 



invite man to their social village. Here with the bison, naked and wild runs the 



scalp-loving savage ; proceeding still southwards, the beech and the sugar maple 



attract the bee, and the bee the honey-loving bear. As warmth increases, men 



bei^in to mass together. Instead of scattered animals and migratory tribes of 



hunters, the picture teams with busy life, toiling, scratching, panting, puffing, to 



produce from mother earth the dust we are doomed to eat, like our remote cousin, 



the renowned serpent. Here, in the zone of changeable weather, which might be 



supposed to be the least favourable to hiiman development, is the stage upon 



which the grand drama of life is most spiritually enacted ; so much energy in fact 



is concentrated in the culture of the intellect, that men seem to forget that they 



have bodies at all. It is in this zone embracing mid-Asia, the north of Africa, 



Europe, and IN. America, that the advancement of man is to be looked for ; it is 



here that his history is essentially unfolded page by page as he proceeds ever 



westwards from the point of his historic creation ; it is here that man, making use 



of natural laws, bends them to his will, adapting by his intellect and accumulated 



experience the raw materials of Nature either to his necessities, his amusements, or 



his aspirations ; it is here that Christianity was first revealed, and here yet 



remains its strongest hold, and yet, in ribald mockery of the principles which it 



teaches, those principles of love and forbearance, we find it the scene of the most 



forbidding crimes, the theatre of wholesale slaughters. But, to proceed. After 



passing over this busy zone, as we approach in our imaginary journey the 



equator, the appearance of Nature becomes jiradually but perceptibly altered ; 



from white, men's complexion is changed to that of olive, from olive to that of 



copper colour, and from this again to black ; and, as though they had swallowed 



some drowsy drug somniferous, men become less inclined to exertion. Here 



kindly Nature, bountiful to profusion, yield.s man all his wants with the minimum 



of toil; the icy breath of the north no longer congeals upon the hoary pendent 



lichens and needle-leaved firs ; rhododendrons, pines, beech, oak, elm and lime 



have disappeared ; evergreen trees and shrubs have displaced them ; myrtles, and 



laurels, and olive, the refreshing orange, figs, and the luscious grape instead of 



holly, and palms begin to appear in the latitude of Rome. I will quote from that 



philosopher poet Goethe, who appears thus early to have sketched out a geography 



of plants, when in allu.sion to the custom of palm-bearing he wrote : — 



In Rome on Palm Sunday they bear true palms. 

 The Cardinals bow reverently and sing old psalms ; 

 Elsewhere those psalms are sung 'raid olive branches. 

 The holly supplies their place among the avalanches, 

 More northern climes must be content with sad willow. 



Now we lose sight of green fields, for the short, crisp, tender grasses are displaced 

 by lofty reeds and canes, so flinty as to turn the edge of the axe, while tree ferns, 

 figs, palms, and bananas form the characteristic features of this steamy clime. So 

 profuse is Nature in this zone that below, above, around, is one tangled mass of 

 prolific vegetation. 



