266 



CHAPTER YIIL 



THE EQUATORIAL ZONE. 



INCLUDING 15 OF LATITUDE ON EACH SIDE OP THE EQUATOR. 



THE feeling with which we meditate a botanical tour over 

 this broad burning belt of land is something akin to those 

 emotions of mingled awe, and curiosity, and anxiety, and 

 bewilderment, with which, as children, we took our first 

 glance round the interior of a menagerie of wild beasts. 

 Then the feeling of bodily fear was perhaps the most pre- 

 dominant ; but now, if we only find ourselves in the some- 

 what analogous case of walking through a hot-house of 

 tropical plants, it is a sense of mental fatigue mingled with 

 delight which we experience at the glimpse which such 

 sights let in upon us of a grand, and beautiful, and un- 

 known world. Types, these sights are, of those forms 

 which, massed and grouped together in their own land, 



