HIGH LIFE. 103 



competitors. The field is less occupied ; life is less rich, 

 less varied, less self-strangling. And therefore speciali- 

 sation hasn't gone nearly so far in cold latitudes 

 or altitudes. Lower and simpler types everywhere 

 occupy the soil ; mosses, matted flowers, small beetles, 

 dwarf butterflies. Nature is less luxuriant, yet in- some 

 ways more beautiful. As we rise on the mountains the 

 forest trees disappear, and with them the forest beasts, 

 from bears to squirrels ; a low, wind-swept vegetation 

 succeeds, very poor in species, and stunted in growth, 

 but making a floor of rich flowers almost unknown 

 elsewhere. The humble butterflies and beetles of the 

 chillier elevation produce in the result more beautiful 

 bloom than the highly developed honey-seekers of the 

 richer and warmer lowlands. Luxuriance is atoned for 

 by a Turkey carpet of floral magnificence. 



How, then, has the world at. large fallen into the 

 pardonable error of believing tropical nature to be so 

 rich in colouring, and circumpolar nature to be so dingy 

 and unlovable ? Simply thus, I believe. The tropics 

 embrace the largest land areas in the world, and are 

 richer by a thousand times in species of plants and 

 animals than all the rest of the earth in a lump put to- 

 gether. That richness necessarily results from the 

 fierceness of the competition. Now among this 

 enormous mass of tropical plants it naturally happens 

 that some have finer flowers than any temperate species ; 

 while as to the animals and birds, they are undoubtedly, 

 on the whole, both larger and handsomer than the fauna 

 of colder climates. But in the general aspect of tropical 

 nature an occasional bright flower or brilliant parrot 



