Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/26

 *selves in masses, the outlines and distribution of the leaves and the form of the stems and of the branches are blended together. The painter (and here the artist's delicate tact and appreciation of nature are demanded) can distinguish in the middle distance and background of a landscape groves of palms or pines from beech woods, but he cannot distinguish the latter from woods consisting of other deciduous forest trees.

Above sixteen different forms of vegetation are principally concerned in determining the aspect or physiognomy of Nature. I mention only those which I have observed in the course of my travels both in the New and Old Continents, where during many years I have attentively examined the vegetation of the regions comprised between the 60th degree of North and the 12th degree of South latitude. The number of these forms will no doubt be considerably augmented when travellers shall have penetrated farther into the interior of Continents, and discovered new genera of plants. In the South-eastern part of Asia, the interior of Africa and of New Holland, and in South America from the river of the Amazons to the province of Chiquitos, the vegetation is still entirely unknown to us. How if at some future time a country should be discovered in which ligneous fungi, Cenomyce rangiferina, or mosses, should form tall trees? The Neckera dendroides, a German species of moss, is in fact arborescent; and bamboos (which are arborescent grasses) and the tree ferns of the tropics, which are often higher than our lime-trees and alders, now present to the European a sight as surprising as would be that