CULTURE OP CHARACTERISTIC EXOTIC PLANTS. 93 



and Mimosas, and moss-covered trunks from which shoot 

 Dracontias, Ferns with their delicate foliage, and Orchidese rich 

 in varied and beautiful flowers, on the one hand ; and on the 

 other, a number of separate low-growing plants classed and 

 arranged in rows for the purpose of conveying instruction 

 in descriptive and systematic botany. In the first case, our 

 consideration is drawn rather to the luxuriant development 

 of vegetation in Cecropias, Carolinias, and light-feathered 

 Bamboos ; to the picturesque apposition of grand and noble 

 forms, such as adorn the banks of the upper Orinoco and the 

 forest shores of the Amazons, and of the Huallaga described 

 with such truth to nature by Martius and Edward Poppig ; 

 to impressions which fill the mind with longing for those 

 lands where the current of life flows in a richer stream, and 

 of whose glorious beauty a faint but still pleasing image is 

 now presented to us in our hot-houses, which formerly were 

 mere hospitals for languishing unhealthy plants. 



Landscape painting is, indeed, able to present a richer 

 and more complete picture of nature than can. be obtained 

 by the most skilful grouping of cultivated plants. Almost 

 unlimited in regard to space, it can pursue the margin of 

 the forest until it becomes indistinct from the effect of 

 aerial perspective ; it can pour the mountain torrent from 

 crag to' crag, and spread the deep azure of the tropic sky 

 above the light tops of the palms, or the undulating 

 savannah which bounds the horizon. The illumination and 

 colouring, which between the tropics are shed over all 

 terrestrial objects by the light of the thinly veiled or perfectly 

 pure heaven, give to landscape painting, when the pencil 

 succeeds in imitating this mild effect of light, a peculiar and 

 mysterious power, A deep perception of the essence of the 



