PDF - Wallace Online

240 TROPICAL NATUREforest-belts in the northern and southern parts of the temperatezones; but owing to the paucity of land in thesouthern hemisphere these are best seen in North Americaand Northern Euro-Asia, where they form the great northernforests of deciduous trees and of Coniferse. These being comparativelywell known to us, will form the standard by areference to which we shall endeavour to point out and renderintelligible the distinctive characteristics of the equatorialforest vegetation.General Features of the Equatorial ForestsIt is not easy to fixupon the most distinctive features ofthese virgin forests, which nevertheless impress themselvesupon the beholder as something quite unlike those of temperatelands, and as possessing a grandeur and sublimity altogethertheir own. Amid the countless modifications in detail whichthese forests present, we shall endeavour to point out thechief peculiarities as well as the more interesting phenomenawhich generally characterise them.The observer new to the scene would perhaps be firststruck by the varied yet symmetrical trunks, which rise upwith perfect straightness to a great height without a branch,and which, being placed at a considerable average distance apart,give an impression similar to that produced by the columnsof some enormous building. Overhead, at a height, perhaps,of a hundred and fifty feet, is an almost unbroken canopy offoliage formed by the meeting together of these great treesand their interlacing branches ;and this canopy is usually sodense that but an indistinct glimmer of the sky is to be seen,and even the intense tropical sunlight only penetrates to theground subdued and broken up into scattered fragments.There is a weird gloom and a solemn silence, which combineto produce a sense of the vast the primeval almost of theinfinite. It is a world in which man seems an intruder, andwhere he feels overwhelmed by the contemplation of . theever-acting forces which, from the simple elements of theatmosphere, build up the great mass of vegetation whichovershadows and almost seems to oppress the earth.