Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/30

 in the equatorial regions. It is on their fruits that the subsistence of a large part of the inhabitants of the torrid zone chiefly depends, and, like the farinaceous cereals of the north, they have followed man from the infancy of his civilisation[16]. The aboriginal site of this nutritious plant is placed by some Asiatic fables or traditions on the banks of the Euphrates, and by others, with more probability, at the foot of the Himalaya. Grecian fables named the fields of Enna as the happy native land of the cereals; and if in northern climes, where corn is cultivated in immense unbroken fields, their monotonous aspect adds but little to the beauty of the landscape, the inhabitant of the tropics, on the other hand, in rearing groves of plantains wherever he fixes his habitation, contributes to the adornment of the earth's surface by the extension of one of the most noble and beautiful forms of the vegetable world.

The form of Malvaceæ[17] and Bombaceæ, represented by Ceiba, Cavanillesia, and the Mexican hand-tree Cheirostemon, has enormously thick trunks; large, soft, woolly leaves, either heart-shaped or indented; and superb flowers frequently of a purple or crimson hue. It is to this group of plants that the Baobab, or monkey bread-tree, (Adansonia digitata), belongs, which, with a very moderate elevation, has a diameter of 32 English feet, and is probably the largest and most ancient organic monument on our planet. In Italy the Malvaceæ already begin to impart to the vegetation a peculiar southern character.

The delicately pinnated foliage of the Mimosa form[18], of which Acacia, Desmanthus, Gleditschia, Porleria, and