THE TREE-FERNS. 437 



be the finest growth of the tropical wilderness. These Ferns, from 

 36 to 50 feet in height, are not unlike Palms in their physiognomy; 

 their stem is only less upright, shorter, and more scaly ; their foliage, 

 slightly dentated on the edges, is more delicate, of a looser and more 

 transparent texture. To this family belong the Blechnum Brasiliense 

 and the AUophila Jwrnda. Not less attractive in appearance are 

 the Clusia rosea or the Carolines insignis. The former of these 

 trees belong to a family (that of the Clusiacese) nearly all whose 

 representatives throw off from every point of their branches long 

 aerial roots. The traveller reposes with a feeling of Sybaritic delight 

 under its thick and evergreen foliage, enriched with brilliant flowers. 

 The second, with its shrunken leaves, owes the specific epithet (insignis, 

 " remarkable ") which botanists have imposed upon it, to the peculiar 

 structure of its flowers. The latter bear in the centre of their chalice 

 a great number of stamens, which form a silken tuft of the' most 

 graceful design. 



The Gramineae, like the Ferns, to use an expression of Hum- 

 boldt's, " ennoble themselves " under the Tropics : witness the 

 Bamboo, the Sugar-Cane, the Sorgho, and the great Panicums. Of 

 the latter genus we have already seen in Africa numerous species. 

 America in its turn offers to our attention the Panicum maximum 

 and plicatum. wood-inhabiting Graminese, which without attaining 

 to the dimensions of the bamboo, or even to that of the cane, far 

 surpass that of their European congener, the millet. 



The graceful palms abound in South America. The greatest of 

 all, the Cocoa-tree, seems there to have discovered its true home, for 

 it nowhere else acquires a greater development. There, too, the 

 Banana flourishes marvellously, no less than the Cocoa-tree, in a 

 wild state, and, like the latter, is carefully cultivated on account of 

 its nourishing and savoury fruits. A multitude of lianas and epiphy- 

 tous plants twine round the trunks and branches of the trees, and 

 frequently choke up their failing life. Some are indigenous to all 

 tropical countries : the Calamus Rotang, for example ; others are 

 more particularly, or even exclusively, proper to the New World. 



