26 TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



crash of thunder, and down streams the deluging rain. 

 Such storms soon cease, leaving bluish-black motionless 

 clouds in the sky until night. Meantime all nature is 

 refreshed ; but heaps of flower-petals and fallen leaves 

 are seen under the trees. Towards evening life revives 

 again, and the ringing uproar is resumed from bush and 

 tree. The following morning the sun again rises in a 

 cloudless sky ; and so the cycle is completed ; spring, 

 summer, and autumn, as it were in one tropical day. 

 The days are more or less like this throughout the year. 

 A little difference exists between the dry and wet seasons; 

 but generally, the dry season, which lasts from July to 

 December, is varied with showers, and the wet, from 

 January to June, with sunny days. It results from this, 

 — that the periodical phenomena of plants and animals do 

 not take place at about the same time in all species, or 

 in the individuals of any given species, as they do in 

 temperate countries. In Europe, a woodland scene has 

 its spring, its summer, its autumnal, and its winter 

 aspects. In the equatorial forests the aspect is the same 

 or nearly so every day in the year : budding, flowering, 

 fruiting, and leaf-shedding are always going on in one 

 species or other It is never either spring, summer, or 

 autumn, but each day is a combination of all three. 

 With the day and night always of equal length, the 

 atmospheric disturbances of each day neutralising them- 

 selves before each succeeding morn ; with the sun in its 

 course proceeding midway across the sky, and the daily 

 temperature almost the same throughout the year — how 

 grand in its perfect equilibrium and simplicity is the 

 march of Nature under the equator ! " 



