OF PLANTS. 207 



has seized his prey, is himself overtaken by destruction ; 

 how the bird of prey, hurrying to feed upon the fresh 

 carcase, falls into the maw of death. Dead beetles, ants 

 and other insects, lie in heaps around, and testify still more 

 how apt the name, " Valley of Death," or " Poison Valley," 

 as these places are called by the natives. The formidable 

 character of these localities arises from the exhalations from 

 the soil, consisting of carbonic acid gas, which, on account 

 of its weight, is a long time diffusing itself in the air. 

 Exactly as in the celebrated Grotto del Cane, at Naples, 

 in the vapour caves of Pyrmont, this gas causes inevitable 

 death by asphyxia to all near the surface of the soil. Man 

 alone, to whom God has given it to walk erect, traverses 

 usually uninjured these deserted tracts, since the poisonous 

 exhalations do not reach up to his head. As the natives 

 of the Himalayas ascribe the difficulty of respiration ex- 

 perienced in the higher alpine passes, 15,000 and 16,000 

 feet above the sea, to the exhalations of poisonous plants, 

 so were the terrible phenomena of the death valleys con- 

 nected with the action of the Antiar poison and the deadly 

 touch of the Pohon Upas ; and it is natural that the 

 legends should have gradually assumed their so frightful 

 character, since, even up to the present time, no antidote 

 to those violent and rapidly acting vegetable matters has 

 been discovered. We will not envy the inhabitant of the 

 tropics the milk of his Cow-tree and, content with the 

 gift of the useful Caoutchouc, we will readily resign the 

 luxuriant nature of those regions, which have so much 

 of the terrible mingled with their beauty. No remedy yet 

 restrains the operations of those poisons ; like the destroy- 

 ing ^Enigma, they oppose themselves to the human race, 

 and make good the proposition, that the bright lights of 



