THE MEMORABLE. 



on their sparkling wings, give them a lustre which 

 the eye can scarcely look upon; and, as they 

 dance in their joyousness over the fragrant bloom, 

 engage in the evolutions of playful combats, or 

 mount up on the wing to a height of several 

 hundred feet above the tree, they constitute, in 

 that brief hour of morning, a spectacle which has 

 seemed to me worth years of toil to see. 



If I may allude to one more remarkable incident 

 in my own natural-history experience, it shall be 

 the interior of a forest in the mountains of Ja- 

 maica. From the almost insufferable glare of the 

 vertical sunshine, a few steps took me into a scene 

 where the gloom was so sombre, — heightened 

 doubtless by the sudden contrast,— as to cast a 

 kind of awe over the spirit. Yet it was a beaute- 

 ous gloom, — rather a subdued and softened light, 

 like that which prevails in some old pillaced 

 cathedral when the sun's rays struggle through 

 the many-stained glass of a painted window. 

 Choice plants that I had been used to see fostered 

 and tended in pots in our stove-houses at home, 

 were there in wild and riant luxuriance. The very 

 carpet was a dense Lycopodinin, of most delicate 

 tracery, cast thick over the prostrate tree-trunks, 

 and the rugged masses of rock ; and elegant ferns 

 were arching out of the crevices. Enormous tow- 

 ering figs and Santa-Marias were seen here and 

 there, venerable giants of a thousand years at 

 least, whose vast trunks pierced through the 

 general roof of quivering foliage, and expanded 

 far above, while from the crevices of their rough 

 bark, and from the forks of the lesser trees curious 

 and elegant parasites, — wild pines, ferns, orchids, 

 cactuses, pothoses, — were clustering in noble pro- 

 fusion of vegetable life. These trees, too, were 

 connected and laced together by long leaves, just 

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