Pa. The birds, however, decked in the gayest plumage conceivable, must give unmixed delight; and a tropical forest, filled with parrots, macaws, and peacocks, and enlivened with the gambols of monkeys and other nimble quadrupeds, must be a very amusing spectacle. The largest of quadrupeds, too, the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus, are natives of these regions; and not only these sublime and harmless animals, but the terrible lion, the cruel tiger, and all the most ravenous beasts of prey, are here found in their greatest bulk and fierceness.
Lu. That would be worse than the insects and reptiles.
Pa. The sea likewise is filled with inhabitants of an immense variety of size and figure; not only fishes, but tortoises, and all the shelly tribes. The shores are spread with shells of a beauty unknown to our coasts; for it would seem as if the influence of the solar heat penetrated into the farthest recesses of nature.
Lu. How I should like to ramble on the seaside there!
Pa. But the elements, too, are there upon a grand and terrific scale. The sky either blazes with intolerable beams, or pours down rain in irresistible torrents. The winds swell to furious hurricanes, which often desolate the whole face of nature in a day. Earthquakes rock the ground, and sometimes open it in chasms which swallow up entire cities. Storms raise the waves of the ocean into mountains, and drive them in a deluge to the land.
Lu. Ah! that would spoil my shell-gathering. These countries may be very fine, but I don’t like them.
Pa. Well, then—we will turn from them to the temperate regions. You will observe, on looking at the map, that these chiefly lie on the northern side of the tropics; for on the southern side the space is almost wholly occupied by sea. Though geographers have drawn a boundary line between the torrid and temperate zones, yet nature has made none; and for a considerable space on the borders, the diminution of heat is so gradual as to produce little difference in the appearance of nature. But, in general, the temperate zones or belts form the most desirable districts on the face of the earth. Their products are extremely various, and abound in beauty and utility. Corn, wine, and oil, are among their vegetable stores: the horse, the ox, and the sheep, graze their verdant pastures. Their seasons have the pleasing vicissitudes of summer and winter, spring and autumn. Though in some parts they are subject to excess of heat, and in others of cold, yet they deserve the general praise of a mild temperature compared to the rest of the globe.
Lu. They are the countries for me, then.
Pa. You do live in one of them, though our island is situated so far to the north that it ranks rather among the cold countries than the warm ones. However, we have the good fortune to be a long way removed from those dreary and comfortless tracts of the globe which lie about the poles, and are called the frigid zones. In these, the cheering influence of the sun gradually becomes extinct, and perpetual frost and snow take possession of the earth. Trees and plants diminish in number and size, till at length no vegetables are found but some mosses and a few stunted herbs. Land animals are reduced to three or four species—raindeer, white bears, and arctic foxes. The sea, however, as far as it remains free from ice, is all alive with aquatic birds, and with the finny tribe. Enormous whales spout and gambol among the floating ice-islands, and herds of seals pursue the shoals of smaller fish, and harbour in the caverns of the rocky coasts.
Lu. Then I suppose these creatures have not much to do with the sun?