894 " PLACES OF NESTLING GREEN." 



are composed. An innumerable quantity of different families stand 

 side by side ; even in the most confined spaces it is rare to see trees 

 of the same nature re-united. Every day, as the traveller advances, 

 he discovers new forms ; oftentimes the outline of the leaf and the 

 ramification of a tree attract his attention, without his being able 

 to distinguish the flowers. 



There is yet another feature, more striking still, and more general 

 than those previously mentioned, which broadly distinguishes the 

 arborescent vegetation of the Tropics from that of northern climates. 

 Here the plants, exposed annually to an often intense degree of cold 

 which lasts for several months, experience a kind of suspension of 

 their vital activity, cease to flower and to fructify, and entirely shed 

 their foliage; the resinous species are the only exceptions to this rule. 

 In the neighbourhood of the Equator, on the contrary, it is during 

 the hottest, driest season that vegetation suffers; then the herbaceous 

 plants and bushes of the plains die down ; but the great trees of the 

 virgin forests are hardly affected ; their foliage incessantly renews 

 itself; their branches are at all times loaded with fruits and flowers, 

 and to the wayfarer's eyes they present the glorious spectacle of an 

 eternal freshness, of a life which never wanes. 



Compared with these great points of difference, common to all 

 the virgin forests of the Tropics, the peculiar features resulting from 

 the botanical constitution which distinguishes more or less exactly one 

 region from another, have, as the reader will understand, but a 

 secondary importance. 



With the exception of a few countries which possess a Flora sui 

 generis such, for example, as Madagascar and Australia the same 

 aspects, the same general forms are almost everywhere reproduced. 



More distinctive differences may be remarked, at the first glance, 

 in the animal life which peoples the forests of the different quarters 

 of the world; but yet these animals everywhere display the same 

 habits. The great majority of the insects and the birds, the apes, 

 the squirrels, and, in general, all the arboreal animals, awake and put 

 themselves in motion at the first glimpse of day, and animate the 



