THE VEGETABLE WORLD. 337 



little Form of Grasses, only of importance in the total 

 impression of their mass, loses nothing by greater distance, 

 while the Plantain and Aroid plants bear to be in the 

 nearest foreground, on account of the beautiful form of 

 their large leaves. On the other hand, the delicate out- 

 lines of the Mimosa leaves become confused into a green 

 mass in the back-ground, while the more lofty Palms, if 

 brought too near, are incapable of giving the total impres- 

 sion, and thus their Beauty actually ceases to exist. 



Future travellers will multiply the number of vegetable 

 Forms, bring forward their importance more determinately, 

 and teach us to perceive the delicate shades of distinction 

 which will allow those great groups to be broken up into 

 smaller; and we shall especially gain in our attempts to form 

 impressions, when a greater store of such artistic repre- 

 sentations lie before us, as the Baron von Kittlitz has, with 

 inimitable truth, furnished in his Views of Vegetation. 



Most deserving of study, but as yet almost wholly 

 unobserved and uninvestigated, is that face of these 

 vegetable Forms which they turn towards Man, the history 

 of his culture, his view of Life. Here these types of 

 Nature first acquire their higher significance, and become 

 to the psychologist and the ethnographer, almost as 

 important as to the Botanist. That the Idea of the World 

 must be different to him who obtains his first impressions 

 from the solemn, winter-green Pine-woods of Sweden, to 

 him who grows up among the misty highland moors and 

 heaths of Scotland, and again to that man who from his 

 infancy has been surrounded by the glancing leaf of 

 the Laurel and the Myrtle under the serene sky of Greece, 

 seems to be so plain that it hardly requires mention, and 

 yet the Idea of Life arising from this is more easily felt 

 than clearly and distinctly developed in words. As in 



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