PREFACE. 



The luxuriance and beauty of Tropical Nature is a 

 well-worn theme, and there is little new to say about 

 it. The traveller and the naturalist have combined 

 to praise, and not unfrequently to exaggerate the 

 charms of tropical life — its heat and light, its superb 

 vegetable forms, its brilliant tints of flower and bird 

 and insect. Each strange and beautiful object has been 

 described in detail ; and both the scenery and the 

 natural phenomena of the tropics have been depicted 

 by master hands and with glowing colours. But, so far 

 as I am aware, no one has yet attempted to give a 

 general view of the phenomena which are essentially 

 tropical, or to determine the causes and conditions of 

 those phenomena. The local has not been separated 

 from the general, the accidental from the essential ; 

 and, as a natural result, many erroneous ideas have 

 become current as to what are really the charac- 

 teristics of the tropical as distinguished from the 

 temperate zones. 



