IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST. 261 



expressing thoughts, emotions, or sentiments which have 

 their sources in the inner depths of our being. 



In descriptions of natural objects or scenery, both in 

 the manner of viewing the phenomena, and in the choice 

 of the expressions employed to describe them, this truth 

 to nature must ever be kept in view as the guiding aim : 

 its attainment will be at once most easily and most effectually 

 secured by simplicity in the narration of what we have 

 ourselves beheld or experienced, and by limiting and 

 individualising the locality with which the narrative is 

 connected. Generalisation of physical views, and the 

 statement of general results, belong rather to the " study 

 of the Cosmos," which, indeed, must ever continue to be 

 to us a science of Induction ; but the animated description 

 of organic forms (plants and animals) in their local and 

 picturesque relations to the varied surface of the earth 

 (as a small fragment of the whole terrestrial life) affords 

 materials towards the study of the Cosmos, and also tends 

 to advance it by the stimulus or impulse imparted to the 

 mind when artistic treatment is applied to phenomena 

 of nature on a great scale. 



Among such phenomena must certainly be classed the 

 vast forest region which, in the tropical portion of South 

 America, fills the great connected basins of the Orinoco 

 and the Amazons. If the name of primeval forest, or 

 "Urwald," which has of late years been so prodigally 

 bestowed, is to be given to any forests on the face of 

 the earth, none can claim it perhaps so strictly as the 

 region of which we are speaking. The term " Urwald," 



