go ASPECTS OF TROPICAL NATURE 



overpowering the verdure of the foliage by their gaudy tints. 

 Thus splendid white, yellow, or red coloured crowns are min- 

 gled with those of darker or more humble hue. At lengtli 

 when, on entering the forest, the single leaves become distin- 

 guishable, even the last traces of harmony disappear. Hen 

 they are delicately feathered, there lobed, — here narrow, there 

 broad, — here pointed, there obtuse, — here lustrous and fleshy. 

 as if in the full luxuriance of youth, there dark and arid, as iJ 

 decayed with age. In many the inferior surface is covered 

 with hair ; and as the mnd plays with the foliage, it appears 

 now silvery, now dark green, — now of a lively, now of a melan- 

 choly, hue. Thus the foliage exhibits an endless variety ol 

 form and colour; and where plants of the same species unite ir 

 a small group, they are mostly shoots from the roots of an olc 

 stem. This is chiefly the case with the palms ; but the specia 

 of the larger trees are generally so isolated in the wood, thai 

 one rarely sees two alike from the same spot. Each is sur- 

 rounded by strangers that begrudge it the necessary space anc 

 air ; and where so many thousand forms of equal pretensions vi( 

 for the possession of the soil, none is able to expand its crowi 

 or extend its branches at full liberty. Hence there is a uni 

 versal tendency upwards; for it is only by overtopping it 

 neighbours that each tree can hope to attain the region o 

 freedom and of light ; and hence also the crowns borne aloft oi 

 those high columnar trunks are comparatively small. 



As the tropical primitive forest occupies sites of a very dif- 

 ferent character, — here extending along the Ioav banks of rivers 

 there climbing the slopes of gigantic mountains, — here unde 

 the equator, there on the verge of the tropics, where many o 

 the trees, annually casting their foliage, remind one of the winte 

 of the temperate zone, — it is of course quite impossible b 

 embrace all these varieties of form and aspect in one genera 

 description. 



On descending from the heights of the Andes to the plains o 

 tlie Marafion, the eye is attracted, in the more elevated forest;; 

 (the region of the Quinquina trees), by a variety of fantastically^! 

 flowering orchids, — and of arborescent ferns, with their lace 

 like giant leaves, — by large dendritic urticeas, — by wonderfu 

 bignonias, banisteriaa, passifloras, and many other inextricably 

 tangled bushropes and creepers. Farther downwards, thougl 





