THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 523 



the palm-trees." Explorers of the valley of the Nile who 

 were really in earnest about their work, have justly 

 observed that the poets would not have written their 

 idylls on these trees if they had found themselves beneath 

 the date-palms of Egypt in the hottest hours of the day. 



There is one solitary exception, the doum-palm of the 

 Thebais {Cacifera tliehalca, Martins). Its Avide-spread 

 branches, terminated liy numerous tufts of large leaves, to 

 which hang monstrous bunches of fruit, give to its forests 

 a diversity, a picturesqueness, Avhich its congeners do not 

 partake of 



The palm-tree really displays all its splendour and its 

 strength only when it shows itself in little groups, boldly 

 planted in the midst of rocks, the crowns of which, waving 

 in the temjjest, seem only to bend in order to defy the 

 fury of the waves breaking tumultuously at their feet. 



The beauty of the Liliacese, the great flowers of Avhich 

 are enamelled with the brightest colours, also charmed 

 Linnteus. He looked upon them as "the nobles of Flora's 

 empire," spreading forth their blazonry on the segments 

 of their resplendent corollas. 



Lastly, according to the legislator of botany, among the 

 numerous families of plants which enliven the globe, the 

 great but humljle family of Graminacea? represents the 

 people. "They are," he said, "the plebeians, the poor, the 

 peasants of the vegetable kingdom. They form the simplest, 

 the most numerous, and the most sprightly part of it; 

 hence it is in them that power and force reside, and the 

 more we trample upon and maltreat them, the more do 

 they multiply." 



Fleshy plants give the strangest of aspects to equatorial 

 landscapes, as for instance in Mexico, the privileged land 

 of the cactuses. It is there that we find growing in almost 



