102 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



with constant variety, while vegetables would not be wanting, with 

 fruits, both cultivated and wild, in superfluous abundance and of 

 a quality that we at home rarely obtain. Oranges and lemons, figs 

 and grapes, melons and watermelons, jack-fruit, custard-apples, 

 cashews, pineapples, etc., are among the commonest, while nu- 

 merous palm and other forest fruits furnish delicious drinks and 

 delicacies which every one soon gets very fond of. Both animal 

 and vegetable oils can be procured for light and cooking. And 

 then, having provided for the body, what lovely gardens and shady 

 walks might be made ! How easy to form natural orchid bowers 

 and ferneries ! What elegant avenues of palms might be planted ! 

 What lovely climbers abound to train over arbours or up the walls 

 of the house ! " 



But, it is objected, this cannot be done without hard 

 work, and we knoiu that " white men cannot live and work 

 in the tropics." But I maintain that we know nothing of 

 the kind. It is not the fact that white men cannot 

 permanently live and work in the tropics. Work of some 

 sort, there as here, is a condition of healthy life. But 

 with a reasonable amount of work — and such is the 

 beneficence of nature that little is needed — man can 

 not only live permanently but most healthily and en- 

 joy ably in those portions of the tropics I am referring 

 to, and probably, with special precautions, in every part. 

 I will now give some of the factn bearing upon this 

 question. 



My own experience assures me that I owe my long life 

 and comparatively good health to my twelve years' 

 residence in the uniform climate and pure air of the 

 equatorial forests, although I suffered frequently from 

 fevers, and on one occasion was brought to the very point of 

 death. I was a very delicate child, with weak lungs, and 

 at the age of sixteen or seventeen suffered from serious 

 ulceration of the lungs, and was only saved by the applica- 

 tion of Dr. Ramage's common-sense air-treatment, some- 

 what analogous to that now being introduced for 

 consumption. When I came home in 1862, although 

 much weakened by other illnesses, my lungs were quite 

 sound; and I distinctly trace my recovery to an open-air 

 life in an equable, warm, pure atmosphere. My work as a 

 collector of natural history specimens led to my being out 



