Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/348

 308 VEGETATION OF

in the tropics, and thus masses of colour are less frequently produced. Individual objects may be more brilliant and striking, but the general effect will not be so great, as that of a smaller number of less conspicuous plants, grouped together in masses of various colours, so strikingly displayed in the meadows and groves of the temperate regions.

The changing hues of autumn, and the tender green of spring, are particular beauties which are not seen in tropical regions, and which are quite unsurpassed by anything that exists there. The wide expanse of green meadows and rich pastures is also wanting ; and, however much individual objects may please and astonish, the effect of the distant landscape is decidedly superior in the temperate parts of the world.

The sensations of pleasure we experience on seeing natural objects, depends much upon association of ideas with their uses, their novelty, or their history. What causes the sensa- tions we feel on gazing upon a waving field of golden corn ? Not, surely, the mere beauty of the sight, but the associations we connect with it. We look on it as a national blessing, as the staff of life, as the most precious produce of the soil ; and this makes it beautiful in our eyes.

So, in the tropics, the broad-leaved banana, beautiful in itself, becomes doubly so, when looked upon as producing a greater quantity of food in a given time, and on a limited space, than any other plant. We take it as a type of the luxuriance of the tropics, — we look at its broad leaves, the produce of six months' growth, — we think of its delicious and wholesome fruit : and all this is beauty, as we gaze upon it.

In the same manner, a field of sugar-cane or an extensive plantation of cotton produces similar sensations : we think of the thousands they will feed and clothe, and the thought clothes them with beauty.

Palms too are subject to the same influence. They are elegant and graceful in themselves ; they are almost all useful to man ; they are associated with the brightness and warmth of the tropics : and thus they acquire an additional interest, a new beauty.

To the naturalist everything in the tropics acquires this kind of interest, for some reason or other. One plant is a tropical form, and he examines it with curiosity and delight. Another is allied to some well-known European species, and this too