A REGION OF DECIDUOUS TREES. 243 



torial evergreen tree growth, near the point where 

 the cessation of the double rainy seasons occurs. 



The reader will doubtless remember that in our 

 first, or Equatorial Zone, the climate at the equator 

 consists practically of but a single season, where high 

 moist temperatures combined with rains prevail more 

 or less throughout the year: while some five or six 

 degrees to the north and south of it, these continual 

 rains gradually become modified into two seasons of 

 regular rains, with two intermediate ones of dry weather, 

 but the same moist atmosphere still continuously pre- 

 vails. We have not, however, thought it desirable, on 

 this account, to sub-divide our " Great Equatorial 

 Forest Zone " into two distinct divisions, corresponding 

 with these differences of climate, for several reasons: 

 but principally because the changes in the vegetation 

 do not seem to be so sufficiently marked as to render 

 such a course desirable; and next because of the 

 difficulty of fixing a boundary line where the perpetual 

 rains begin to intermit. 



The Great Bush Region, however, we shall venture 

 to define as a region marked by the cessation of the 

 evergreen forest as the leading type of vegetation; 

 and as the approximate boundary of the country where 

 deciduous trees begin to assume a prominent feature 

 in the landscape. Here also, the region of double- 

 rainy seasons comes to an end with the equatorial 

 zone; and at about the i5th parallels of latitude we 

 enter a region of single rainy seasons, where the year 

 is divided into one long period of rains, and another 

 of continuous dry weather. Then, as the traveller 

 journeys across the Bush Region, away from the 

 equator, towards the poles, the period of the rains 



