490 THE UNIVERSE. 



There is one solitary exception, the doum-palm of the 

 Theba'is (Cucifera Thebaica, Martins). Its wide -spread 

 branches, terminated by numerous tufts of large leaves, to 

 which hang monstrous bunches of fruit, give to its forests 

 a diversity, a picturesqueness, which its congeners do not 

 partake of. 



The palm-tree really displays all its splendor and its 

 strength only when it shows itself in little groups, boldly 

 planted in the midst of rocks, the crowns of which, waving 

 in the tempest, seem only to bend in order to defy the fury 

 of the waves breaking tumultuously at their feet. 



The beauty of the Liliacese, the great flowers of which 

 are enamelled with the brightest colors, also charmed Lin- 

 naeus. He looked upon them as " the nobles of Flora's 

 empire," spreading forth their blazonry on the segments of 

 their resplendent corollas. 



Lastly, according to the legislator of botany, among the 

 numerous families of plants which enliven the globe, the 

 great but humble family of Graminacese represents the 

 people. " They are," he said, " the plebeians, the poor, the 

 peasants, of the vegetable kingdom. They form the sim- 

 plest, the most numerous, and the most sprightly part of 

 it ; hence it is in them that power and force reside, and the 

 more we trample upon and maltreat them, the more do 

 they multiply." 



Fleshy plants give the strangest of aspects to equatorial 

 landscapes, as, for instance, in Mexico, the privileged land of 

 the cactuses. It is there that we find growing in almost a 

 miraculous manner the gigantic torch-cactus ( Cereus gigan- 

 y Engelm). One is quite astonished at finding it upon 



