122 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
lichens ; and some of the most magnificent species, 
both as regards size and colour, have been 
gathered in the Cinchona forests which clothe’ 
the lower slopes of the Andes, and in the warmer 
and more densely-wooded parts of Australia 
and New Zealand. The thick impervious forests 
of Brazil, however, are said to be almost destitute 
of them ; their places on the trunks and boughs 
of the trees being occupied by endless varieties of 
ferns, tillandsias, orchids, and other epiphytic 
plants, which seem to hold a floral revel; the 
amazing luxuriance of higher vegetable life effec- 
tually keeping. down and banishing plants of a 
simpler structure, and of a more sluggish and 
feeble nature. On the loftiest mountains of the 
globe they constitute the last remnants of vege- 
tation, the last efforts of expiring nature which 
fringe the limits of eternal snow; and long after 
the botanist has left behind him the last stunted 
Alpine flower, blooming like a lone star on a 
midnight sky, amid the loose crumbling stones of 
the moraine ; long after the last moss has ceased 
to deck the brown and lifeless ground with a 
scarce perceptible film of green, his eye, wearied 
by the universal desolation, rests with peculiar 
interest and pleasure on the hardy lichens, which 
clothe every rugged rock that lifts up its head 
through the avalanche, and which luxuriate amid 
