30 TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



to point out the chief peculiarities as well as the more 

 interesting phenomena which generally characterise them. 



The observer new to the scene would perhaps be first 

 struck by the varied yet symmetrical trunks, which rise 

 up with perfect straiglitness to a great height without a 

 branch, and which, being placed at a considerable average 

 distance apart, give an impression similar to that pro- 

 duced by the columns of some enormous building. 

 Overhead, at a height, perhaps, of a hundred feet, is an 

 almost unbroken canopy of foliage formed by the meeting 

 together of these great trees and their interlacing 

 branches ; and this canopy is usually so dense that but 

 an indistinct glimmer of the sky is to be seen, and even 

 the intense tropical sunlight only penetrates to the ground 

 subdued and broken up into scattered fragments. There 

 is a weird gloom and a solemn silence, which combine 

 to produce a sense of the vast — the primeval — almost 

 of the infinite. It is a world in which man seems an 

 intruder, and where he feels overwhelmed by the con- 

 templation of the ever-acting forces, which, from the 

 simple elements of the atmosphere, build up the great 

 mass of vegetation which overshadows, and almost seems 

 to oppress the earth. 



Characteinstics of the Larger Forest-trees. — Passing 

 from the general impression to the elements of which 

 the scene is composed, the observer is struck by the 

 great diversity of the details amid the general uniformity. 

 Instead of endless repetitions of the same forms of trunk 

 such as are to be seen in our pine, or oak, or beech woods, 

 the eye wanders from one tree to another and rarely 

 detects two of the same species. All are tall and 

 upright columns, but they difier from each other more 



