Vegetable Kingdom in ilie Brazils. 41 



and fermentation. Forthwith the lofty trees, as well as the ten- 

 der plants, solemnize, by the unfolding of their majestic tops, 

 and by the innumerable flowers with which they array them- 

 selves, the returning season of their development. At the time 

 of their maturity, the most extraordinary forms of seeds and 

 fruits fall off, and cover the earth, teeming with life, in various 

 places, almost a foot deep. Huge columns of carbonic acid gas 

 then ascend from the sprouting or corrupting germs, and a thick 

 heavy atmosphere hangs in vapour over the woods. The suc- 

 culent glittering foliage, and the tillandsia, like a beard hanging 

 down from the boughs, drop rain continually ; the bushes of the 

 bromelia stand like pitchers jSUed with water ; and warm intervals 

 of sunshine speedily dry up the moisture of the wilderness, so 

 that decomposition and corruption follow immediately on the 

 most violent vital excitement. The sober nature of the vegeta- 

 ble kingdom seems all at once to indulge in an inordinate desire 

 to assume strange and grotesque forms. Bushes with thorns 

 that cause malignant sores ; palms, armed with dreadful prickles; 

 closely-entangled lianes, yielding a milky juice*, confound the 

 senses of the wanderer, who, being seized by the stunning exha- 

 lations of the osassacu, anxiously longs to escape from this noxious 

 chaos into the peaceful majesty of the primitive woods on the Serra 

 do Mar. No wonder if, in these regions, a gloom be cast over 

 the spirit of the wandering Indian, who, awed by the horror of 

 the dark lonely woods, sees, or thinks he sees, every where the 

 ghostly phantoms which his own wild fancy has conjured up. 



Lectures on the Natural History of the Sciences. By Baron 

 CuviER. 



Conclusion of Lecture IV. from page 349 of former Volume. 



A HE oldest, the Ionian school, was founded by Thales, about 

 the year 600 before Christ. It possessed a great number of 

 adlierents in the cities of Asia Minor, Ephesus, Miletum, &c. 

 The most celebrated of all was Anaxagoras, who modified its 

 principles, and introduced them at Athens, about the year 500 

 before Christ. 



* Such as Allamanda catbartica. 



