BOOK IV.
T H E F O R E S T S.
CHAPTER I.
THE VIRGIN FORESTS.
“The noonday sun
Now shone upon the Forest, one vast mass
Of mingling shade....
Like restless serpents, clothed
In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,
Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around
The gray trunks, and, as gamesome infants’ eyes.
With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,
Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,
These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs
Uniting their close union; the woven leaves
Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,
And the night’s noontide clearness, mutable
As shapes in the weird clouds.”
Shelley.
n all parts of the world some regions exist where, owing to a concourse of favourable circumstances, the productive forces of Nature have been able to manifest themselves with an exceptional energy—where vegetable life, in particular, has acquired an extraordinary development. The rich soil is covered, over more or less extensive areas, with vivacious plants, robust and of great stature, which closely rooted, one against another, with intertwining and overarching boughs, sustaining by their bulk and shading with their foliage other and weaker plants, have formed in the course of innumerable ages those masses of umbrageous gloom called Forests.
These, undoubtedly, are one of the grandest and most impressive monuments of the Creative Power; one, I may add, of the most eloquent, for there is nothing in all Nature whose study better repays the student, or which more largely abounds in important lessons.
The virgin forest, moreover, is one of the sanctuaries of Nature, where her mysteries are seldom profaned by man. There life reveals itself, and moves at liberty, under an infinite variety of forms. It is the asylum of a multitude of animals of all classes, which find therein, united, the two essential conditions of existence—shelter and nourishment. Without the difficult approaches, the obscurity and the profound depth of the forests, says a naturalist, what would become of the species of mammals, birds, and reptiles, against which man wages incessant war? Nature, then, seems to have provided these immense reservoirs to prevent their species from being totally annihilated. Independently of the trees which constitute the forests, a host of other plants make them their exclusive habitat; thence the specific and eminently characteristic names—such as Sylvestris, Sylvaticus, Nemorosus—imposed upon a great number among them. Such plants are distinguished from their congeners by the great dimensions of their stems; but, on the other hand, they do not possess the brilliantly-coloured flowers which adorn the plants of the mountains and the plains always exposed to the action of the solar light.
The forests, moreover, offer for the botanist this remarkable and singularly precious circumstance, that they form natural collections of trees of the same species, or of several species of the same genus, or at least of the same family; so that their limits circumscribe the habitat of these grand vegetables, and permit us to determine with ease their geographical distribution.