26 THE WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 



tation only very imperfectly ; but we find abundant 

 compensation in the beautiful language and the brilliant 

 imagination of the poet, and in the imitative art of 

 the painter which enables us to create a tropical world 

 of our own and pass in review before our mind the 

 living forms of exotic nature. In the cold climates of 

 the North, in the midst of sterile plains, man can ap- 

 propriate to himself the labors of others and enjoy at 

 home what the traveller has gone far to seek." 



To this sketch, taken from one of the grand found- 

 ers of the science of the geography of plants, we will 

 add a few sentences from the gifted and painstaking 

 author of "Scenes of Nature under the Tropics," 

 which are worthy to be placed by the side of the words 

 of the great master. 



" Upon the banks of the lakes and the rivers," says 

 Denis, " the heat of the sun, calling into activity the 

 beneficent moisture of these vast reservoirs, produces 

 gigantic forms of vegetation. Trees which elsewhere 

 grow with difficulty, rise here majestically and embel- 

 lish the banks at the same time that they attest their 

 fertility. The Amazon, the Ganges, the Niger roll their 

 waters through vast forests which, being replaced from 

 age to age by new growth, have always resisted the ef- 

 forts of man. It seems indeed that Nature chooses the 

 banks of these immense rivers to display here a mag- 

 nificence unknown in other places. I have noticed 

 in South America, that the trees, rising to an im- 

 mense height near the rivers, give a peculiar aspect to 

 the forests. Not that in such places Nature presents 

 an appearance of absolute disorder ; on the contrary, 



