Botanical 1 7-J 



cocks, and which is covered by a vegetation of incomparable richness 

 and beauty. Here rise woods of Tectona grandis, which require a 

 whole day to cross ; they are met with chiefly in places where the 

 rocks " de gres" predominate. At their foot, and under their shade, 1 

 found such a great number of beautiful fungi, especially agarics, 

 polypori, pezizse, clavariae, and spheriae, (all quite different from our 

 European species), that the vast hopes which Professor Blume had 

 inspired were much below reality. Among these fungi, I remark- 

 ed also several very interesting new genera. It appears that under 

 the tropics, the vegetation of plants of this family is not limit- 

 ed, as with you, to certain fixed seasons of the year, for, at this 

 moment, even in the middle of the dry season, I gather a greater 

 number of them than in December, when abundant and continual 

 rains prevail. Consequently these expressions : " when mushrooms 

 predominate, autumn wanes, the leaves fall, and the vegetable king- 

 dom thinks of a new spring," can apply only to what passes in the 

 temperate zone. Indeed, to continue in this figurative style, here 

 the sun is immoveable, the leaves preserve their verdure, the flowers 

 exhale incessantly their delicious perfume, spring and autumn em- 

 brace each other ; the virginal breath of the young plants is fatal to 

 the old ; the power of the fungous vegetation is similar then to these 

 parasites, who, at the conclusion of a sumptuous banquet, on which 

 they have largely fed, go to produce a new offspring. A transient 

 autumn is quickly changed for an eternal summer, whose only 

 clouds are the shades of the forests. The circumstances which prin^ 

 cipally favour the development of vegetables are found here : the 

 heat is constant, and the difference of temperature between the wet 

 and dry seasons is scarcely sensible ; and humidity never abandons 

 these primitive forests, where the arches of foliage rarely permit a 

 ray of the sun to penetrate. Lastly, the rich and brownish humus 

 of the plain, perpetually impregnated with this moisture, is of that 

 softness which favours the growth of the fungi. The quantity of 

 water raised in vapour by the heat of the day, and which the cool- 

 ness of the nights deposits again, covers the leaves with a dew so 

 abundant, that in the driest day, one can scarcely go far into one of 

 these woods, without coming out quite soaked. Add to this, the 

 immense quantity of twigs, branches, and even trunks, lying scat- 

 tered on the ground, — trunks whose interior is already changed to 

 mould, which the bark, so thin that one may easily break it, only 

 preserves in its first form ; and you may form to yourself an idea 

 of the external circumstances which favour the uninterrupted de- 

 velopment of fungi in the tropical forests, and decks them every 



