256 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
trees, etc. — the glory of South American forests — 
will never attain in England anything like, their 
normal development. Nearly all vegetation here 
is arborescent. The largest river in the world runs 
through the largest forest. Fancy if you can two 
millions of square miles of forest, uninterrupted save 
by the streams that traverse it ; for the savannahs 
(here called campos) that here and there occur 
are so insignificant, that I suppose a greater gap 
would be made in the largest wood in England by 
cutting down a single oak than any one of these 
campos makes in the immense Amazonian forest. 
You will hence be prepared to learn that nearly 
every natural order of plants has here trees among 
its representatives. Here are grasses (bamboos) 
of 40, 60, or more feet in height, sometimes grow- 
ing erect, sometimes tangled in thorny thickets, 
through which an elephant could not penetrate. 
Vervains forming spreading trees with digitate 
leaves like the Horse-chestnut. Milkworts, stout 
woody twiners ascending to the tops of the highest 
trees, and ornamenting them with festoons of fra- 
grant flowers not their own. Instead of your Peri- 
winkles we have here handsome trees exuding a 
milk which is sometimes salutiferous, at others a 
most deadly poison, and bearing fruits of corre- 
sponding qualities. Violets of the size of apple 
trees. Daisies (or what might seem daisies) borne 
on trees like Alders. 
The natural orders which by their frequency 
give a character to the vegetation of the Amazon 
are chiefly such as are altogether absent from the 
English Flora. Myrtles are exceedingly numerous, 
and so provokingly like each other that whoever 
