28 OUTLINES OF FORESTRY. 



thus refers to the conditions favorable to luxuriant 

 vegetable growth : 



"The warm and the moist these are the most favorable 

 conditions for the production of an exuberant vegetation. 

 Now, the vegetable covering is nowhere so general, the vege- 

 tation so predominant, as in the two Americas. Behold, 

 under the same parallel where Africa presents only parched 

 table-lands, those boundless virgin forests of the basin of the 

 Amazon, those selvas, almost unbroken over a length of more 

 than fifteen hundred miles, forming the most gigantic wilder- 

 ness of this kind that exists in any continent. And what 

 vigor, what luxuriance of vegetation ! The palm-trees, with 

 their slender forms, calling to mind that of America itself, 

 boldly uplifted their heads one hundred and fifty or two hun- 

 dred feet above the ground, and domineer over all the other 

 trees of these wilds, by their height, by their number, and by 

 the majesty of their foliage. Innumerable shrubs and trees 

 of smaller height fill up the space that separates their trunks ; 

 climbing plants, woody- stemmed, twining lianos, infinitely 

 varied, surround them both with their flexible branches, dis- 

 play their own flowers upon the foliage, and combine them in 

 a solid mass of vegetation, impenetrable to man, which the 

 axe alone can break through with success. On the bosom of 

 their peaceful waters swims the Victoria, the elegant rival of 

 the Rafllesia, that odorous and gigantic water-lily, whose white 

 and rosy corolla, fifteen inches in diameter, rises with a daz- 

 zling brilliancy from the midst of a train of immense leaves, 

 softly spread upon the waves, a single one covering a space of 

 six feet in width. The rivers, rolling their tranquil waters 



