THE WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 25 



the umbrageous banks of the Rio Magdalena in South 

 America, grows a creeping aristolochia, the flowers of 

 which are four feet in circumference, so that the chil- 

 dren amuse themselves by making head-dresses of the 

 blossoms. The flower of the rafflesia is nearly three 

 feet in diameter and weighs nearly fifteen pounds. 



" The extraordinary height to which not only the 

 mountains but whole countries rise at the equator, and 

 the depression of the temperature, which is the re- 

 sult of that elevation, enables the inhabitants of the 

 Torrid Zone to behold an extraordinary spectacle. 

 At the same moment that they see around them the 

 palms and bananas of the South, they are called upon 

 to notice a number of vegetable forms which ordina- 

 rily belong only to northern lands. The cypress, the 

 fir and the oak, the thorn and alders, very much like our 

 own, cover the plateaux of Southern Mexico and the 

 part of the Andes which crosses the equator. Thus na- 

 ture permits the inhabitant of the Torrid Zone to see 

 growing near each other all the vegetable forms of the 

 earth without leaving the place where he was born, 

 just as the vault of heaven displays to his view all 

 the world of life from the one pole to the other. These 

 enjoyments and many others are denied to the son of 

 the JSTorth. He never sees a large number of the stars, 

 nor does he ever behold many of the most beautiful 

 vegetable forms, such as the palms, the tree ferns, the 

 bananas, and the mimosas with their delicate feathery 

 leaves. 



" The few sickly exotics which we raise in our 

 green-houses represent the majesty of tropical vege- 



