[32] p. 29.—“Melastomaceæ.”
This group comprises the genera Melastoma (Fothergilla and Tococa Aubl.) and Rhexia (Meriana and Osbeckia), of which we found, on either side of the equator in tropical America alone, 60 new species. Bonpland has published a superb work on Melastomaceæ, in two volumes, with coloured drawings. Some species of Rhexia and Melastoma ascend in the Andes, as alpine or Paramos shrubs, as high as nine and ten thousand five hundred (about 9600 and 11190 English) feet: among these are Rhexia cernua, R. stricta, Melastoma obscurum, M. aspergillare, and M. lutescens.
[33] p. 29.—“Laurel-form.”
To this form belong the genera of Laurus and Persea, the Ocoteæ so numerous in South America, and (on account of physiognomic resemblance), Calophyllum and the superb aspiring Mammea, from among the Guttiferæ.
[34] p. 29.—“How interesting and instructive to the landscape painter would be a work which should present to the eye the leading forms of vegetation!”
In order to define somewhat more distinctly what is here only briefly alluded to, I permit myself to introduce some considerations taken from a sketch of the history of landscape painting, and of a graphical representation of the physiognomy of plants, which I have given in the second volume of Kosmos (Bd. ii. S. 88-90; English edit. vol. ii. p. 86-87).
“All that belongs to the expression of human emotion and to the beauty of the human form, has attained perhaps its highest perfection in the northern temperate zone, under the skies of Italy and Greece. By the combined exercise of imitative art and of creative imagination, the artist has derived the types of historical painting at once from the depths of his own mind, and from the contemplation of other beings of his own race. Landscape painting, though no merely imitative art, has, it may be said, a more material substratum and a more terrestrial domain: it requires a greater mass and variety of distinct impressions, which the mind must receive within itself, fertilize by its own powers, and reproduce visibly as a free work of art. Hence landscape painting must be a result at once of a deep and comprehensive reception of the visible spectacle of external nature, and of this inward process of the mind.”
“Nature, in every region of the earth, is indeed a reflex of the whole; the forms of organised beings are repeated everywhere in fresh combinations; even in the icy north, herbs covering the earth, large alpine blossoms, and a serene azure sky, cheer a portion of the year. Hitherto landscape painting has pursued amongst us her pleasing task, familiar only with the simpler form of our native floras, but not, therefore, without depth of feeling, or without the treasures of creative imagination. Even in this narrower field, highly gifted painters, the Caracci, Gaspar Poussin, Claude Lorraine, and Ruysdael, have with magic power, by the selection of forms of trees and by effects of light, found scope wherein to call forth some of the most varied and beautiful productions of creative art. The fame of these master-works can never be impaired by those which I venture to hope for hereafter, and to which I could not but point, in order to recall the ancient but deeply-seated bond which unites natural knowledge with poetry and with artistic feeling; for we must ever distinguish in landscape painting, as in every other branch of art, between productions derived from direct observation, and those which spring from the depths of inward feeling and from the power of the idealising mind. The great and beautiful works which owe their origin to this creative power of the mind applied to landscape-painting, belong to the poetry of nature, and like man himself, and the imagination with which he is gifted, are not rivetted to the soil, or confined to any single region. I allude here more particularly to the gradation in the form of trees from Ruysdael and Everdingen, through Claude Lorraine to Poussin and Annibal Caracci. In the great masters of the art we perceive no trace of local limitation; but an enlargement of the visible horizon, and an increased acquaintance with the nobler and grander forms of nature, and with the luxuriant fulness of life in the tropical world, offer the advantage not only of enriching the material substratum of landscape painting, but also of affording a more lively stimulus to less gifted artists, and of thus heightening their powers of production.”
[35] p. 30.—“From the rough bark of Crescentias and Gustavia.”
In the Crescentia cujete (the Tutuma or Calabash-tree, whose large fruit-shells are so useful to the natives for household purposes),—in the Cynometra, the Theobroma (the Cacao-tree), and the Perigara (the Gustavia of Linnæus),—the delicate flowers break through the half carbonized bark. When children eat the fruit of the Pirigara speciosa (the Chupo), their whole body becomes tinged with yellow; it is a jaundice, which lasts from 24 to 36 hours, and then disappears without the use of medicine.