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The sun was in the zenith, and the flood of light which he poured down upon the river, and which flashed sparkling back, owing to a slight rippling movement of the waters, rendered still more sensible the red haze which veiled the distance. All the naked rocks and boulders around were covered with a countless number of large thick scaled igua

On the sandy bank of the Rio Apure, closely bordering upon the impenetrable forest, our author and his party bivouacked, as usual, under the open sky, surrounded by fires to keep off the prowling jaguars. Their hammocks were susspended on the oars of their boat, driven vertically into the ground, and the deep stillness which pre-nas, gecko-lizards, and variously spotted salamanvailed was broken only from time to time by the blowing of the fresh-water dolphins. Soon after eleven o'clock, however, such a disturbance began to be heard in the adjoining forest that sleep became impossible during the rest of the night.

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ders. Motionless, with uplifted heads and open mouths, they appeared to inhale the burning air seek shelter in the recesses of the forest, and the birds with ecstasy. At such times the larger animals hide themselves under the thick foliage of the trees, or in the clefts of the rocks; but if, under this apparent entire stillness of nature, we listen for the faintest tones which an attentive ear can seize, we shall perceive an all-pervading rustling sound, a humming and fluttering of insects close to the ground and in the lower strata of the atmosphere. Everything announces a world of organic activity and life. In every bush-in the cracked bark of the trees-in the earth, undermined by hymenopterous insects, life stirs audibly. It is, as it were, one of the many voices of nature, heard only by the sensitive and reverent ear of her true votaries.-Vol. i., p. 272.

The wild cries of animals appeared to rage throughout the forest. Among the many voices which resounded together, the Indians could only recognize those which, after short pauses in the general uproar, were first heard singly. There was the monotonous howling of the alouates, (the howling monkeys,) the plaintive, soft, and almost flute-like tones of the small sapajous, the snarling grumblings of the striped nocturnal monkey, (the nictipithicus trivirgatus, which I was the first to describe,) the interrupted cries of the great tiger, the cuguar, or maneless American lion, the peccary, the sloth, and a host of parrots, parraquas, and other pheasant-like birds. When the tigers The second volume of the "Aspects of Nacame near the edge of the forest, our dog, which ture" commences with an instructive section "On had before barked incessantly, came howling to seek refuge under our hammocks. Sometimes the the Physiognomy of Plants," which our author cry of the tiger was heard to proceed from amidst prefaces with some highly interesting observathe high branches of a tree, and was then always tions on the universal profusion with which life accompanied by the plaintive piping of the monkeys is everywhere distributed. The information who were seeking to escape from the unwonted which is here conveyed to us has a high value at pursuit. If we ask the Indians why this incessant all times, but a very peculiar one at present, noise and disturbance takes place on particular when a great degree of probability attaches to the nights, they answer with a smile, that "the animals are rejoicing in the bright moonlight, and opinion that organic atoms floating in our atmoskeeping the feast of the full moon.' To me it phere are the cause of that dreadful pestilence appeared that the scene had originated in some which is now ravaging our land. In the dense accidental combat, that the disturbance had spread and lower strata of our atmosphere we are accusto other animals, and that the noise was thus more tomed to observe the general prevalence of life, and more increased. The jaguar pursues the pec- and travellers inform us that even on the polar caries and tapirs, and these pressing against each ice the air is resonant with the cries and songs other in their flight break through the interwoven tree-like shrubs which impede their escape; the of birds and with the hum of insect life. In the apes on the tops of the trees, frightened by the upper and more ethereal regions, 18,000 feet crash, join their cries to those of the larger ani- above the sea, Humboldt and Bonpland found mals; the tribes of birds who build their nests in butterflies and other winged insects which were communities are aroused, and thus the whole ani- involuntarily carried upwards by ascending curmal world is thrown into a state of commotion. rents of air; and the same creatures are carried Longer experience taught us that it is not always by storms from the land to great distances at sea. the celebration of the brightness of the moon which breaks the repose of the woods. We witnessed M. Boussingault, when ascending the Silla of the same occurrence repeatedly, and found that the Caraccas, saw whitish shining bodies rise from voices were loudest during violent falls of rain, or the valley to the summit of the Silla, 5755 feet when the flashing lightning, accompanied with loud high, and then sink down to the neighboring seapeals of thunder, illuminated the deep recesses of coast. This phenomenon continued for an hour, the forest.-Vol. i., pp. 270, 271. and the white bodies, though considered at first to have been small birds, turned out to be agglomerations of straws or blades of grass, belonging to the genus vilfa tenacissima, which abounds in the Caraccas and Cumana. Creatures still more wonderful are detected in the atmosphere by the aid of the microscope--minute animalculæ, (the rotifera and Brachione,) motionless and apparently dead, lifted up by the winds in multitudes from the surface of evaporating waters, and carried. about by atmospheric currents till the descending dews restore them to the earth, dissolving the film or envelope which incloses their transparent

Scenes like these form a striking contrast with the deathlike stillness which prevails within the tropics" during the noontide hours of a day of more than usual heat." At the remarkable "Narrows" of Baraguan, where the Orinoco forces itself through a pass 5690 feet wide, our author had occasion to spend a day, when the thermometer in the shade was so high as 122° of Fahrenheit. There was not a breath of air to stir the fine dustlike sand, and under the influence of the mirage the outlines of every distant object had wave-like undulations.

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rotating bodies, and probably by means of the oxy- | the horizon, shedding through the perfumed air

gen which all water contains, breathing new irritability into their dormant organs.

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The celebrated Prussian naturalist, M. Ehrenberg, has discovered, by microscopic observations, that the dust or yellow sand which falls like rain on the Atlantic, near the Cape de Verde Islands, and is sometimes transported to Italy, and even the middle of Europe, consists of a multitude of silicious shelled microscopic animals. • Perhaps," ," says Humboldt, many of them float for years in the upper strata of the atmosphere, until they are brought down by vertical currents, or in accompaniment with the superior current of the trade-winds, still susceptible of revivification, and multiplying their species by spontaneous division, in conformity with the particular laws of their organization."

their soft and planetary lustre; while bright furrows of flashing light marked the track of the dolNot only the ocean but also the waters of our phins through the midst of the foaming waves. marshes hide from us an innumerable multitude of strange forms. The naked eye can with difficulty distinguish the Cyclidias, the Euglenes, and the host of Naiads, divisible by branches like the Lemna cr Duckweed, of which they seek the shade. Other creatures inhabit receptacles where the light cannot penetrate, and an atmosphere variously composed, but differing from that which we breathe: such are the spotted ascaris which lives beneath the skin of the earthworm, the Leucoptera, of a bright silvery color, in the interior of the shore Naiad, and a Pentastoma which inhabits the large pulmonary cells of the rattlesnake of the tropics. There are animalculæ in the blood of frogs and of salmon; and even, according to Nordmann, in the fluids of the eyes of fishes, and in the gills of the bleak.-Vol. ii., pp. 5-7.

But besides creatures fully formed, (continues Humboldt,) the atmosphere contains innumerable It is impossible to peruse this interesting extract germs of future life, such as the eggs of insects and the seeds of plants; the latter provided with without noticing its connection with the remarkalight hairy and feathery appendages, by means of ble discovery recently made by Dr. Brittan, that which they are wafted through the air during long in the discharges from cholera patients there are autumnal wanderings. Even the fertilizing dust found minute cellular bodies, having the aspect and or pollen from the anthers of the male flowers, in character of fungi; that the same bodies exist in spaces in which the sexes are separated, is carried the air and water of infected districts; and that over land and sea by winds and by the agency of winged insects to the solitary female plant on other they are never found in persons or places where shores. Thus, wherever the glance of the inquirer the pestilence does not prevail. These bodies vary into nature penetrates, he sees the continual dis- from the five hundredth to the ten thousandth of semination of life either fully formed or in the germ. an inch in diameter; the smallest occurring in the We do not yet know where life is most air, the larger in the vomit, and the largest in the abundant-whether on continents or in the unfath- dejections of the patient. Admitting, what yet omed depths of the ocean. Through the excellent requires a more extensive induction to prove it, work of Ehrenberg, we have seen the sphere of that these bodies are always found in cholera organic life extend, and its horizon widen before our eyes, both in the tropical parts of the ocean, localities, and never elsewhere, it still remains to and in the fixed or floating masses of ice of the be proved that they are the cause of cholera. Antarctic seas. Silicious shelled polygastrica, Various facts, however, have been long known, and even coscinodisca with their green ovaries, which render such an opinion highly probable. have been found alive enveloped in masses of ice The Ergot, the Spermoedia Clarus,* for example, only twelve degrees from the pole; the small black a fungus which is found abundantly in rye, is a glacier flea and Podurellæ inhabit the narrow tubular holes examined by Agassiz, in the Swiss gla- poison which exercises a peculiar action in conciers. Ehrenberg has shown that on several micro-tracting the uterus. When it composes a considscopic infusoria others live as parasites; and that, in the Gallionellæ, such is their prodigious power of development, or capability of division, that in the space of four days an animalcule invisible to the naked eye can form two cubic feet of the Bilin polishing slate! In the sea, gelatinous worms, living or dead, shine like stars, and by their phosphoric light change the surface of the wide ocean into a sea of fire. Ineffaceable is the impression made on my mind by the calm nights of the torrid zone on the waters of the Pacific. I still see the dark azure of the firmament, the constellation of the ship near the zenith, and that of the cross declining towards

By means of a drop of water Fontana revived a rotitera which had been two years dried and motionless. Baker resuscitated paste eels which Needham had given him in 1744. Doyere has recently shown by experiment that rotiferæ come to life, or pass from a motionless state to a state of motion, after having been exposed to temperatures of from 11° to 113° of Fahr. Payen has shown that the sporules of a minute fungus, (oidium aurantiacum,) which deposits a ruddy feathery coating on a crumb of bread are not deprived of their power of ination by an exposure of half an hour to a temperature of from 183 to 207° of Fahr., before being strewed on fresh and perfectly unspoiled dough.

germ

erable portion of rye bread, it produces one of the most terrific diseases to which man is subject. The ergot is produced within the seeds of various grasses, such as Secale Agrostis, Dactylis, Festuca, Elymus, &c.; and is rather supposed to be a diseased condition of the grasses, than a distinct fungus. But however this may be, its effects upon the human frame are terrible. Nausea and vomiting are followed by numbness in the extremities, which, after being wasted with excruciating pains, eventually fall off at the joints, withering and becoming black and hard as if they were charred. This disease, called the Dry Gangrene, has been at different periods epidemic in Sologne, a tract of wet, clayey land lying between the Loire and Cher. The fingers, or toes, or feet, or legs, or even the thighs, drop off at the joints. According to Duhamel, it destroyed nineteen out of twenty of the persons infected; and, strange to

*The Sphacelia segetum of Klotzsch, and the Farinaria Poa of Sowerby. It is called Ergot, from its resemblance to a cock's spur.

say, the sufferer in one case survived, though his thighs fell off at the hips! But it is not merely in rye that this poison is generated. When wheat, rice, or any other grain is prematurely cut down, or has become mouldy or musty from age, or from the place where it has been stored-or when it has been mixed with the seeds of poisonous plants, such as the Raphanus Raphanistrum, and the Lolium temulentum, the most excruciating diseases have been occasioned by its use.

greatly exaggerated. But I have now been an eye-witness to almost the whole scene of horror so finely painted in the following lines:

Plage proxima circum
Fugit rapta cutis, pallentiaque ossa retexit:
Tegmine poples erat: femorum quoque musculus omnis
Liquitur, et nigra distillant iguina tabe.

Membra notant sanie: Suræ fluxere: sine ullo

Phars., Lib. ix. v. 767.

An effect equally strange has been observed in America, on men and animals when fed on maize that has been overrun with parasitic fungi. Deer, dogs, apes, and parrots were intoxicated by it. Fowls laid eggs without shells. Swine cast their bristles, while in man it occasioned only baldness and loosening of the teeth.

But the most remarkable case on record of the frightful effects of damaged grain, poisoned no doubt by some deleterious fungus, is recorded in the Philosophical Transactions, for 1762,* by Dr. Charlton Wollaston, and by the Reverend Mr. Bones, minister of the parish. John Downing a In the passage which we have quoted from poor laboring man, who lived at Wattisham, near Humboldt, we see the process by which deleterious Stowmarket, in Suffolk, had fed his family, a wife elements of a microscopic kind, and even those of and six children, on what is called clog-wheat, or a large size, are raised in the atmosphere and dislaid wheat, which had been gathered and thrashed tributed over the globe by currents in the lower separately. The pickle was discolored, and smaller and upper regions of the air ;-but these and other than that of the sound wheat. On Sunday morn- elements equally deleterious may be lifted up or ing, the 10th of January, the eldest girl com- even torn from the surface of the earth, by proplained of a violent pain in the calf of her left cesses not generally referred to. When electricleg. In the evening, another girl felt the same ity passes from one body to another, it carries off pain. On Monday, the mother and another child; the matter of the first body in an extreme state of and on Tuesday, all the rest, except the father, subdivision, and deposits it upon the other ;—and were similarly affected. The sufferers shrieked when, in the ascending stroke, lightning passes with pain. In a few days the legs turned black from the earth into the atmosphere, it carries up and mortified. The mortified parts separated from into the air the imponderable elements of the metthe sound part, in most of them, two inches be-alliferous rocks and ground from which it issued. low the knee; in some lower, and in one child, at the ancle. Three lost both legs and one child both feet. The following was the state of their legs on the 13th April :

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Mary, the mother, aged 40, the right foot off at the ancle; the left leg mortified; a mere bone, but not off.

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Mary, aged 15, one leg off below the knee; the other perfectly sphacelated, but not yet off.

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Elizabeth, aged 13, both legs off below the

knees.

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Sarah, aged 10, one foot off at the ancle. "Robert, aged 8, both legs off below the knees.

Iron, sulphur, and carbon, have been actually transported by lightning, and deposited on the surfaces which were struck by it; and when we consider the prevalence of electricity at every season and in every clime, and its constant transmission from the crust of the earth into the superincumbent atmosphere, we can see no difficulty in understanding how the elements of all metallic bodies may be diffused through the air, and distributed, according to laws of which we know nothing, by the magnetic or other currents which surround the earth. Inorganic matter, too, in a minute state of subdivision, is thrown off from the hardest bodies by friction, by change of temperature, and "Edward, aged 4, both feet off at the ancle. by ordinary combustion, as well as in volcanic ac"An infant, four months old, dead. tion; so that there are powerful causes constantly "The father was attacked about a fortnight at work, the tendency of which is to pollute the after the rest of the family, and in a slighter de-air we breathe, and the water we drink, with gree, the pain being confined to the two fingers of his right hand, which turned blackish, and were withered for some time, but are now better; and he has in some degree recovered the use of them." During this calamity, the family were in other respects in good health. They ate heartily, and slept well, and were free from fever. "One poor boy, in particular, looked as healthy and florid as possible; and was sitting on the bed quite jolly, drumming with his stumps!"

ingredients that, when accumulated and combined by particular causes, may prove injurious to health, and be destructive of animal and vegetable life.

Although the characteristic physiognomy of different parts of the earth's surface depends on a great variety of external phenomena, yet our author is justly of opinion that the principal impression made upon the traveller, is by the magnitude and constant presence of vegetable forms. Animals, from their smaller size and their repeated "I have always been used," says Dr. Wollas-absence from the eye, form but a small part of ton, in concluding his extrordinary narrative, " to a landscape, while trees, from their greater size read Lucan's description of the effects of the bite and their occurrence in extended groups, fill the of the little serpent Seps as fabulous, or at least eye with a living mass of vegetation. Their * Vol. lii., part ii., pp. 523, 521. great age, too, combined with their magnitude,

regions between the 60th degree of north, and the 10th degree of south latitude. These forms, which decrease and increase from the equator to the poles, according to fixed laws, he thus enu

Lianes or Twining Rope
Plants.

influences the imagination, and gives them a mon- | which he proceeds to give very interesting deumental character, equally interesting to the anti- scriptions from observations made during his quarian and the naturalist. The colossal Dragon travels both in the new and old continents, in tree at Oratava, in Teneriffe, is 79 feet round its root, and 48 as measured by Humboldt further up. Mass is reported to have been said at a small altar erected in its hollow trunk, in the 15th century. Trees, 32 feet in diameter, have been merates:observed at the mouth of the Senegal river; and Palms. Golberry found in the valley of the two Gaguacks, Plantains or Bananas. trunks which were 32 English feet in diameter Malvacea and Bombanear the roots, with a height of only 64 feet. Adanson and Perottet assign an age from 5150 to 6000 years to the Adansonia which they measured, but calculations made from the number of annual rings, give shorter periods. According to Decandolle, the yew (Taxus baccata) of Braborne, in Needle Trees. Kent, is 3000 years old; the Scotch yew of For-Pothos and Aroidiæ.

ceæ.

Mimosa.

Ericeæ or Heath form.
Cactus form.
Orchidea.
Casuarineæ.

Aloe form.
Gramineæ.
Ferns.

Liliaceæ.

Willow form.
Myrtaceæ.
Melastomaceæ.

Laurel form.

tingal, from 2500 to 2600 years; those of Crow- The Palms have been universally regarded as hurst, in Surrey, 1450 years old, and those of the loftiest, noblest, and most beautiful of all Ripon, in Yorkshire, 1200. Endlicken observes, vegetable forms. Their gigantic, slender, ringed, that a yew tree in the churchyard of Grasford, in and occasionally prickly stems, sometimes 192 North Wales, which is 52 feet in circuit below the feet high, terminate in an aspiring and shining branches, is 1400 years old, and that another in foliage, either fan-like or pinnated, with leaves Derbyshire, has the age of 2096 years. In Li- frequently curled like some of the grasses. In thuania lime trees have been cut down with 815 receding from the equator they diminish in height annual rings, and 87 feet in circuit, and Humboldt and beauty. The true climate of palms is under states that in the southern temperate zone, some a mean annual temperature of from 78° to 81°. species of Eucalyptus attain the enormous height | The date variety lives, but does not thrive, in a of 245 feet. The largest oak tree in Europe is mean temperature of from 59° to 621°. In some near Saintes, in Lower Charente. It is 64 feet species of the flower, sheath opens suddenly with high, 29 in circuit near the ground, and 23 feet an audible sound. five feet higher up. "In the dead part of the trunk, a little chamber has been arranged, from 10 feet 8 inches to 12 feet 9 inches wide, and 9 feet 8 inches high, with a semicircular bench cut out of the fresh wood. A window gives light to the interior, so that the sides of the chamber, which is closed with a door, are clothed with ferns and lichens, giving it a pleasing appearance. Judging by the size of a small piece of wood which has been cut above the door, and in which the marks of 200 annual rings have been counted, the oak of Saintes would be between 1800 and 2000 years old."

It has been found from ancient and trustworthy documents of the 11th century, that the root of the wild rose tree at the crypt of the Cathedral of Hildesheim, is 1000 years old, and its stem 800. After the cathedral had been burnt down, Bishop Hezilo inclosed the roots of this rose tree in a vault which still exists, and he trained the branches of it upon the walls of the crypt built above the vault, and reconsecrated in 1061. The stem, which is now living, is 26 feet high, and 2 inches thick. The most remarkable example of vegetable development is exhibited in the Fucus gigantea, a submarine plant, which attains a length of from 400 to 430 feet, surpassing the loftiest coniferæ, such as the Sequoia gigantea, and the Taxodium sempervirens.

The aspect or physiognomy of Nature is, according to Humboldt, determined by about sixteen or nineteen different forms of vegetation, of

The Palms are everywhere accompanied by Plantains or Bananas, groves of which form the ornaments of moist localities in the regions of the equator. Their stems are low, succulent, and almost herbaceous, and are surmounted by long and bright green silky leaves, of a texture thin and loose. Noble and beautiful in shape, they adorn the habitation of man, while they form the principal article of his subsistence under the torrid zone.

The Malvacea and Bombacea have trunks enormously thick;-leaves large, soft, and woolly, and superb flowers often of a purple or crimson color. The Buobab, or monkey bread tree, belongs to this group. It is 32 feet in diameter, but moderately high, and it is probably the largest and most ancient organic monument on our planet. The Mexican hand tree, (cheirostemus platanoides,) with its long curved anthers projecting beyond the fine purple blossom, causing it to resemble a hand or claw, belongs to this group. Throughout the Mexican States, this one highly ancient tree is the only existing individual of this extraordinary race, and is supposed to be a stranger planted about five centuries ago by the kings of Toluca.

The Mimosa, including the acacia, desmanthus, gleditschia, porleria, tamarindus, &c., are never found in the temperate zone of the Old World, though they occur in the United States. They frequently exhibit that umbrella-like arrangement of the branches which is seen in the Italian stonepine. The deep blue of the tropic sky seen

through their finely divided foliage, has an extremely picturesque effect. The irritability of the African sensitive plant is mentioned by Theophrastus and Pliny. The most excitable is the Mimosa pudica, and next to it the Dormiens, the somniens, and the somniculosa.

The Ericea or Heaths appear to be limited to only one side of our planet, covering large tracts from the plains of Germany, France, and Britain, to the extremity of Norway. They adorn Italy, and are luxuriant on the Peak of Teneriffe; but the most varied assemblage of species occurs in the south of Africa. They are entirely wanting in Australia, and of the 300 known species, only one has been discovered across the whole of America, from Pennsylvania and Labrador to Nootka and Alashka.

'The Cactus form is almost wholly American, and Humboldt observes, that "there is hardly anything in vegetable physiognomy which makes so singular and ineffaceable an impression on a newly arrived person as the sight of an arid plain thickly covered like those of Cremona, New Barcelona, with columnar and candelabra-like elevated cactus stems." The forms of the cactus are sometimes spherical, sometimes pointed, and sometimes they are shaped like tall polygonal columns, resembling the pipes of an organ. In the arid plains of South America, the melon cactus supplies a refreshing juice to the animal tribes, though the plant is half-buried in the sand, and encased with prickles. The columnar cactus carries its stems to the height of 30 or 32 feet, dividing into candelabra-like branches like the African EuphorThe cactus wood is incorruptible, and well fitted for oars.

bias.

The Orchidea are remarkable for their bright green succulent leaves, and for the colors and shape of their flowers, sometimes resembling insects, and sometimes birds. The taste for this superbly flowering group of plants became so general, that the brothers Loddiges had in 1848 cultivated 2360 species, and at the end of 1848, Klotzsch reckoned the number of species to be 3545. The Casuarine form, leafless and gloomy, with their string-like branches, embrace trees with branches, like the stalks of an equisetaceous plant. It occurs only in India and in the Pacific. The Needle Trees, or Coniferæ, including pines, thuias, and cypresses, are rare in the tropics, and inhabit chiefly the regions of the north. There are 312 species of coniferæ now living, and 178 fossil species found in the coal measures, the bunter sandstone, the Keupfer, and the Jurassic formations. Of the 114 species of the genus Pinus which are at present known, not one belongs to the southern hemisphere. The following are the heights of some of the plants of this tree :

Pinus Grandis, in new California,
Pinus Fremontiana, do. do.,
Dacrydium cupressinum, New Zealand,
Araucaria excelsa, Norfolk Island,

- imbricata, Chili,

Pinus Lambertiana,

224 feet.

224

213

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224 234-260

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As a contrast to these lofty trees, Humboldt mentions the small willow tree, (Salix arctica,) as being only two inches high. The Tristicha hypnoides in only, or less than of an inch, and yet provided with sexual organs, like our oaks and most gigantic trees. The needles of some of the pine trees vary from five inches to a foot in length. The roots of the Taxodium distichum, which is sometimes 128 feet in height and 39 in girth, presents the curious phenomenon of woody excrescences, conical and rounded, and sometimes tabular, which project from 3 to 4 feet from the ground, and when they are very numerous they have been likened by travellers to the grave-tablets in a Jewish burying-ground. The stumps of white pines exhibit a very singular degree of vitality in their roots. After they have been cut down, they continue for several years to produce fresh layers of wood, and to increase in thickness, without putting forth new shoots, leaves, or branches.

The Pothos forms, or Aroidia, belong to the tropics. These plants clothe parasitically the trunks of aged and decaying forest trees. Their stalks are succulent and herbaceous, and support large leaves. The flowers of the aroidiæ are cased in hooded sheaths, and some of them during the development of the flower exhibit a very considerable increase of vital heat, about 40° above that of the atmosphere, the increase being, in some, greater in the male than in the female plant. The vital heat which Dutrochet observed to a small extent in other plants, and even among funguses, disappeared at night. Leaves of great size, suspended on long fleshy leaf-stalks, are found in the Nymphæacea and Nelumboneæ. The round leaves of the magnificent water plant, the Victoria Regina, discovered in 1837, by Sir Robert Schomburgh, in the river Berbice, are six feet in diame ter, and are surrounded by turned-up margins from three to five inches high, their inside being light green, and their outside a bright crimson. The flowers, which have an agreeable perfume, are white and rose-colored, and fifteen inches in diameter, with many hundred petals. About 20 or 30 blossoms may be seen at the same time, within a very small space. According to Poppig, the Euryale Amazonica, which he found near Tefe, had leaves six feet in diameter. The largest known flowers, however, belong to a parasitical plant, the Rafflesia Arnoldi, discovered in 1818, by Dr. Arnold, in Sumatra. It has a stemless flower, three English feet in diameter, surrounded by large leaf-like scales. "The flower weighs above 14 pounds, and, what is very remarkable, has the smell of beef, like some of the fungi." The largest flowers in the world, says our author, apart from compositæ, (in the Mexican Helianthus

* At three feet above the ground a stem of this tree was 574 feet in girth.

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