NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS. 193 



connects the river basins of the Orinoco and the Amazon. 

 This region deserves, in the strictest sense of the word, to 

 be called a primeval forest a term that has, in recent times, 

 been so frequently misapplied. Primeval (or primitive), as 

 applied to a forest, a nation, or a period of time, is a word of 

 rather indefinite signification, and generally but of relative 

 import. If every wild forest, densely covered with trees, on 

 which man has never laid his destroying hand, is to be re- 

 garded as a primitive forest, then the phenomenon is common 

 to many parts both of the temperate and the frigid zones ; if, 

 however, this character consists in impenetrability, through 

 which it is impossible to clear with the axe, between trees 

 measuring from 8 to 12 feet in diameter, a path of any length, 

 primitive forests belong exclusively to tropical regions. This 

 impenetrability is by no means, as is often erroneously 

 supposed in Europe, always occasioned by the interlaced 

 climbing " lianes," or creeping plants, for these often consti- 

 tute but a very small portion of the underwood. The chief 

 obstacles are the shrub-like plants which fill up every space 

 between the trees, in a zone where all vegetable forms have 

 a tendency to become arborescent. If travellers, the moment 

 they set foot in a tropical region, and even while on islands, 

 in the vicinity of the sea-coast, imagine that they are within 

 the precincts of a primeval forest, the misconception must 

 be ascribed to their ardent desire of realizing a long- cherished 

 wish. Every tropical forest is not primeval forest. I have 

 scarcely ever used the latter term in the narrative of my 

 travels ; although, I believe, that of all investigators of nature 

 now living, Bonpland, Martius, Poppig, Robert and Richard 

 Schomburgk, and myself, have spent the longest period of 

 time in primeval forests in the interior of a great continent. 



Notwithstanding the striking richness of the Spanish 

 language in designations, (descriptive of natural objects, 

 of which I have already spoken), yet one and the same word 

 monte is employed for a mountain and a forest, for cerre 



o 



