Vegetation in the Tropics. 



CHAPTEK II. 



VEGETATION IN THE TROPICS. 



TN order to obtain some approximate idea of the 

 -- grandeur and the magnificence of the vegetable 

 world, we must leave the temperate climates to which 

 we may have been accustomed, and pass from under 

 the cold northern sky to the countries that are loved 

 by the sun, where nature still lives in all its youthful 

 vigor, and glows in full luxuriance ; where the earth 

 preserves, as it were, a living museum of all the riches 

 which have elsewhere disappeared in the immense 

 succession of primitive ages. For this purpose we 

 will follow certain travellers upon whose reflections 

 on the power of nature as manifested in the plants of 



