“It has been justly called, after its lamented discoverer, the Rafflesia. A model was an excellent method of making us acquainted with its appearance; for the northern nations can have but a faint idea of the majestic forms of tropical vegetation from mere drawings and descriptions; and still less can they judge of them from the sickly plants in our stoves and greenhouses.”
This is just what I have myself thought a hundred times, mamma. I then asked her about the Cactus tribe, of which we have so many singular-looking species in Brazil.
“It is, indeed,” she replied, “a most grotesque family; some with their round backs and spines resembling a hedgehog, while others appear like the pipes of an organ rising into long channelled columns. They are almost entirely confined to the New World, one species only being a native of the south of Europe. This is the C. opuntia, or prickly pear, which bears on the edge of its leaf an agreeably flavoured fruit. The melo-cactus has been named by St. Pierre the Vegetable Spring of the Desert: its shape is spherical, and though half concealed in the sand of the parched plains in South America, the animals, who are always tormented by thirst, discover it at a great distance, and notwithstanding its formidable prickles, greedily suck the refreshing juice with which it abounds.”
From the rich vegetation of America, we went to New Holland, and she told me that though but little of the interior has been yet explored, numbers of vegetables totally different from those of America, though in the same degrees of latitude, have been found there. “They seem to have quite a separate character; and those that are suited to the nourishment of man, are as rare in that country as they are common in America. The forests of New Holland, where the axe has never been heard, and where vegetation extends itself without restraint, are described as having a very singular appearance; the trees crumbling with age, and covered with mosses and lichens.—Among their most beautiful productions are the mimosæ, the superb metrosideros, and the whole tribe of eucalyptus; many of which are from one hundred and sixty feet to one hundred and eighty feet in height.”
I asked Miss Perceval whether South America or India had the greatest number of plants. “India, I believe,” said she; “its inhabitants have been so long in some degree civilized that, in addition to its native vegetation, many plants must have been naturalized, and many varieties produced by culture; and India exclusively boasts of the perfume of the most precious spices.
“But there is another part of the world which we must not forget,” continued Miss Perceval, “where nature seems to delight in multiplying the species belonging to each genus. I allude to the Cape of Good Hope, where the silvery lustre of the innumerable families of the proteaceæ gives to the woods an appearance quite unlike those of either Europe or America. The heaths are almost infinite in variety; the geraniums are scarcely less so, and the gladiolus, the ixia, and the whole order of irideæ, decorate the fields and thickets of the Cape, with an exuberance unknown in any other country.
“To form a just view of vegetable nature, we must observe it in those countries where the ground has not been turned by the hand of man. Few such spots are now to be found in Europe, except on the summits of the Alps and Pyrenees. There mountains piled on mountains, rising above the clouds, form so many gardens, furnished with a vegetation of their own, and the character of which changes with the temperature at each degree of elevation. The same gradation takes place on all other lofty mountains; and in Frazer’s account of the Himālā chain, which separates Thibet from India, there is a long list of English plants that he found there, at the altitude which corresponds with our temperate climate; such as horse-chesnut, birch and apricot, strawberries, raspberries, lily of the valley, and many others; and still higher up, he even saw the famous Iceland lichen.”
6th.—Yesterday Mr. Lumley and Mr. Maude dined here; and in conversing about the new books which Mr. Maude has just brought from London, he spoke very highly of Sir John Malcolm’s “Sketches of Persia.” He mentioned several interesting anecdotes which he found there; and to entertain Wentworth, he related some of the exploits of Roostem and his wonderful horse Reksh; of which you shall have the following as a specimen.
“All countries have their fabulous heroes, and Persia had her Hercules in the renowned Roostem. He undertook the deliverance of his sovereign who was a prisoner in Hyrcania, and set out alone on his good horse Reksh. Fatigued by his first day’s journey, he lay down to sleep, having turned his horse into a neighbouring meadow. There Reksh was attacked by a furious lion: but after a short contest, he struck his antagonist to the ground with a blow from his fore-hoof, and completed the victory by seizing the lion’s throat with his teeth. When Roostem awoke, he was more enraged than surprised that Reksh, unaided, should have risked such an encounter. ‘Hadst thou been slain,’ said he, ‘how should I have accomplished my enterprise?’”
This story produced a grand discussion—some doubted the power of the horse to strike such a creature as a lion to the earth. Wentworth quoted different books of travels to prove that horses always trembled with instinctive dread at the sight of a lion; and even Mr. Maude, highly as he estimated the courage of a horse, did not seem to think him capable of such a noble effort. I thought to myself that it was perfectly suited to the other fabulous adventures of Roostem.