INCITEMENTS TO THE STUDY OF NATURE. 



HE. Cultivation of tropical plants Assemblage of contrasted 

 forms Impression of the general characteristic physiog* 

 nomy of the vegetation produced by such means. 



THE effect of landscape painting, notwithstanding the 

 multiplication of its productions by engravings and by the 

 modern improvements of lithography, is still both more 

 limited and less vivid, than the stimulus which results from 

 the impression produced on minds alive to natural beauty 

 by the direct view of groups of exotic plants in hot-houses 

 or in the open air. I have already appealed on this subject 

 to my own youthful experience, when the sight of a colossal 

 dragon tree and of a fan palm in an old tower of the botanic 

 garden at Berlin, implanted in my breast the first germ of 

 an irrepressible longing for distant travel. Those who are 

 able to reascend in memory to that which may have given 

 the first impulse to their entire course of life, will recognise 

 this powerful influence of impressions received through the 



I would here distinguish between those plantations which 

 are best suited to afford us the picturesque impression of 

 the forms of plants, and those in which they are arranged 

 as auxiliaries to botanical studies ; between groups distin- 

 guished for their grandeur and mass, as clumps of Bananas 

 and Heliconias alternating with Corypha Palms, AiaUcarias 



