224 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



of nature which is regulated by climate, have been, in many 

 respects, altered. 



In all regions of the earth the palm is found associated 

 with the plantain or banana; the Scitaminece and Musaceee of 

 botanists, Heliconia, Amomum, and Strelitzia. This form has 

 a low, succulent, and almost herbaceous stem, the summit of 

 which is crowned with delicately striped, silky, shining leaves 

 of a thin and loose texture. Groves of bananas form the 

 ornament of humid regions ; and on their fruit the natives of 

 the torrid zone chiefly depend for subsistence. Like the fari- 

 naceous cereals or corn-yielding plants of the north, the 

 banana has accompanied man from the earliest infancy of his 

 civilization (16). By some Semitic traditions the primitive 

 seat of these nutritious tropical plants has been placed on the 

 shores of the Euphrates, and by others, with greater proba- 

 bility, in India, at the foot of the Himalaya mountains. 

 Greek legends cite the plains of Enna as the home of the 

 cereals. Whilst, however, the cereals, spread by culture over 

 the northern regions, in monotonous and far extending tracts, 

 add but little to the beauty of the landscape ; the inhabitant 

 of the tropics, on the other hand, is enabled, by the pro- 

 pagation of the banana, to multiply one of the noblest and 

 most lovely of vegetable productions. 



The form of the Malvaceas (1 7) and Bombaceae, represented 

 by Ceiba, Cavanillesia, and the Mexican hand tree ( Cheiroste- 

 mow), has immensely thick stems, with lanuginous, large, 

 cordate, or indented leaves, and magnificent flowers, frequently 

 of a purple-red. To this group belongs the Bahobab, or monkey 

 bread-tree, Adansonia digitata, which, with a moderate height, 

 has occasionally a diameter of 32 feet,*" and may probably be 

 regarded as at once the largest and most ancient organic 

 memorial of our planet. The Malvaceae already begin to im- 

 part to the vegetation of Italy a peculiarly southern character. 



* The weight of the lower branches bends them to the ground, so that 

 a single tree forms a hemispherical mass of verdure sometimes 150 feet 

 in diameter. ED. 



