THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 489 



isms which die as they issue from the earth ; from the wood 

 which is substituted for iron to the gelatinous plant which 

 the slightest touch crushes ! And yet, in the midst of this 

 inextricable chaos, science reveals to us order and eternal 

 wisdom. 



The sceptre of vegetation belongs to the oak. When, in 

 the depth of night, we wander amid the sombre and stately 

 precincts of Mount Etna, the imposing majesty of these 

 denizens, centuries old, and the huge shadows of their agi- 

 tated and groaning summits, fill us with awe and terror, and 

 announce that we are in the presence of the king of our 

 forests. One dreads to hear the plaintive groans which 

 froze Dante with terror as they issued from the black 

 boughs of the Wood of Suicides. 



The palms, decorated w r ith their waving crowns, are, in 

 the eyes of all, the emblem of tropical vegetation. Poets 

 have often sung of their magnificence ; and Linnaeus, im- 

 pressed by their brilliant appearance, decorated them with 

 the name of " princes of the vegetable kingdom." 



But those who travel in the East, which the great Swed- 

 ish botanist never did, find that masses of palms are far 

 from having the grand and imposing look of our European 

 forests. They form only a vista of naked and monotonous 

 columns, the leafy dome of which allows the rays of the sun 

 to pass through ; hence a popular saying of the ancients 

 tells us that " no person can travel with impunity beneath 

 the palm-trees." Explorers of the valley of the Nile who 

 were really in earnest about their work have justly ob- 

 served that the poets would not have written their idylls on 

 these trees if they had found themselves beneath the date- 

 palms of Egypt in the hottest hours of the day. 



