458 COSMOS. 



CULTIVATION OF TROPICAL PLANTS CONTRAST AND ASSEM- 

 BLAGE OF VEGETABLE FORMS IMPRESSIONS INDUCED 



BY THE PHYSIOGNOMY AND CHARACTER OF THE VEGE- 

 TATION. 



LANDSCAPE painting, notwithstanding the multiplication of 

 its productions by engravings, and by the recent improve- 

 ments in lithography, is still productive of a less powerful 

 effect than that excited in minds susceptible of natural beauty, 

 by the immediate aspect of groups of exotic plants in hot- 

 houses or in gardens. I have already alluded to the subject 

 of my own youthful experience, and mentioned that the sight 

 of a colossal dragon-tree and of a fan palm in an old tower 

 of the botanical garden at Berlin, implanted in my mind the 

 seeds of an irresistible desire to undertake distant travels. 

 He who is able to trace through the whole course of his 

 impressions that which gave the first leading direction to his 

 whole career, will not deny the influence of such a power. 



I would here consider the different impression produced 

 by the picturesque arrangement of plants, and their associa- 

 tion for the purposes of botanical exposition; in the first 

 place, by groups distinguished for their size and mass, as 

 Musaceae and Heliconiae, growing in thick clumps, and 

 alternating with Corypha-palms, Araucariae, and MimosaB, 

 and moss-covered trunks, from which shoot forth Dracontia, 

 delicately leaved Ferns, and richly blossoming Orchideae; 

 and in the next, by an abundance of separate lowly plants, 

 classed and cultivated in rows for the purpose of affording 

 instruction in descriptive and systematic botany. In the first 

 case, our attention is challenged by the luxuriant development 

 of vegetation in Cecropiae, CaroliniaB, and light feathery 

 Bamboos; by the picturesque association of the grand and 

 noble forms, which embellish the shores of the Upper Orinoco, 

 the wooded banks of the Amazon, or of the Huallaga, so 

 vividly and admirably described by Martius and Edward 

 Poppig ; and by the sentiment of longing for the lands in 

 which the current of life flows more abundantly and richly, 

 and of whose beauty a faint but still pleasing image is reflected 

 to the mind by means of our hothouses which originally 

 served as mere nurseries for sickly plants. 



