A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro,

by Alfred Russel Wallace

So, in the tropics, the broad-leaved banána, beautiful in itself, becomes doubly so, when looked upon as producing a greater quantity of food in a given time, and on a limited space, than any other plant. We take it as a type of the luxuriance of the tropics,—we look at its broad leaves, the produce of six months’ growth,—we think of its delicious and wholesome fruit: and all this is beauty, as we gaze upon it.

In the same manner, a field of sugar-cane or an extensive plantation of cotton produces similar sensations: we think of the thousands they will feed and clothe, and the thought clothes them with beauty.

Palms too are subject to the same influence. They are elegant and graceful in themselves; they are almost all useful to man; they are associated with the brightness and warmth of the tropics: and thus they acquire an additional interest, a new beauty.

To the naturalist everything in the tropics acquires this kind of interest, for some reason or another. One plant is a tropical form, and he examines it with curiosity and delight. Another is allied to some well-known European species, and this too attracts his attention. The structure of some are unknown, and he is pleased to examine them. The locality of another is doubtful, and he feels a great pleasure in determining it. He is ever examining individual objects, and confounds his own interest in them, from a variety of causes, with the sensations produced by their beauty, and thus is led to give exaggerated descriptions of the luxuriance and splendour of the vegetation.

As most travellers are naturalists, this supposition will account for the ideas of the tropics generally obtained from a perusal of their works.

If I have come to a different conclusion, it is not that I am incapable of appreciating the splendours of tropical scenery, but because I believe that they are not of the kind usually represented, and that the scenery of our own land is, of its own kind, unsurpassed: there is nothing approaching it in the tropics, nor is the scenery of the tropics to be found with us. There,—forms of stems and climbers, gigantic leaves, elegant palms, and individual plants with brilliant flowers, are the characteristic features. Here,—an endless carpet of verdure, with masses of gay blossoms, the varying hues of the foliage, and the constant variety of plain and forest, meadow and woodland, more than individual objects, are what fill the beholder with delight.

CHAPTER XVI.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ZOOLOGY OF THE AMAZON DISTRICT.

A. Mammalia.

Notwithstanding the luxuriance of the vegetation, which might be supposed to afford sustenance, directly or indirectly, to every kind of animal life, the Amazon valley is remarkably deficient in large animals, and of Mammalia generally has a smaller number both of species and individuals, than any other part of the world of equal extent, except Australia. Three small species of deer, which occur but rarely, are the only representatives of the vast herds of countless species of deer and antelopes and buffaloes which swarm in Africa and Asia, and of the wild sheep and goats of Europe and North America. The tapir alone takes the place of the elephants and rhinoceroses of the Old World. Two or three species of large Felidæ, and two wild hogs, with the capybára and páca, comprise almost all its large game; and all these are thinly scattered over a great extent of country, and never occur in such large numbers as do the animals representing them in other parts of the world.