THE VEGETABLE WORLD. 339 



other with the aspiring Pines, these have worked the 

 mighty influence on the delight or melancholy of men. So 

 will the considerations of the Plant-formations, as they are 

 composed of those forms, have unequal import to us, and the 

 more that herein especially is expressed the peculiar 

 character of different countries. 



No inhabitant of our climes, whom a friendly Genius 

 has guided to the rich world of the vertical sun, and 

 happily restored to his home, has found it possible to resist 

 the impression which the peculiarity of tropical vegeta- 

 tion made upon him, and never will he forget it. The 

 common expressions by which men attempt to convey its 

 characters, richness, fulness, luxuriance, &c., are but dull 

 and obscure, nay even false, since he who has ever seen a 

 northern primitive forest, the mighty, spreading trunks, the 

 mouldering bodies of the dead, the plenitude of Ferns and 

 Mosses clothing and enveloping all, living and dead 

 must come to the next to true belief, that a greater lux- 

 uriance of vegetable growth is not well conceivable. But 

 a more accurate conception is awakened by the statement 

 that the nearer we approach the hot regions, the more the 

 social plants disappear, and the more the most diverse 

 forms become intermixed. And yet, true as this pro- 

 position is, those will be less inclined to admit it who, 

 depending on the physiognomy more than on botanical 

 definition, recall to mind particular characteristic forms of 

 wood, bush, or steppe for the explanation indeed names 

 the fundamental cause of the phenomenon, but does 

 not demonstrate how the same brings about the final 

 result. 



When we have, from the dusky shadows of our thickly 

 leaved Beech woods, formed an ideal conception of the 



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