Identifier: polartropicalwor00hartuoft (find matches)
Title: The polar and tropical worlds : a description of man and nature in the polar and equatorial regions of the globe
Year: 1874 (1870s)
Authors: Hartwig, G. (Georg), 1813-1880 Guernsey, Alfred Hudson, 1824-1902
Subjects: Arctic peoples Natural history Antarctica Arctic regions Tropics
Publisher: Guelph, Ont. : J.W. Lyon
Contributing Library: Gerstein - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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herly regions. Social plants, which render European vegetation somonotonous, are but rarely found within the tropics. Trees, nearly twice as highas our oaks, there glow with blossoms large and magnificent as those of our lilies.On the shady banks of the Magdalena river, in South America, grows a climbingAristolochia, whose flower, of a circumference of four feet, the children, while play-ing, sometimes wear as a helmet; and in the Indian Archipelago the blossomof the Rafflesia measures three feet in diameter, and weighs more than fourteenpounds. The number of known plants is estimated at about 200,000, and the greater part ofthis vast multitude of species belongs to the torrid zone. But if we consider how veryimperfectly these sunny regions have as yet been explored,—that in South America KG THE TROPICAL WOULD. enormous forest lands and river basins have never yet been visited by a naturalist,—tliat the vcgitation of the greater part of Central Africa is still completely hidden in
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FOREST OX THE PANAMA BAILROAD. mystery,—that no botanist has ever yet penetrated into the interior of Madagascar,IJorneo, New Guinea, South-western China, and Ultra-Gangetic India,—and that, THE BAOBAB. 52/ moreover, many of the countries visited by travelers have been but very superficiallyand hastily examined,—we may well doubt whether even one-fourth part of the tropicalplants is actually known to science. What a vast field for future naturalists! Whatprospects for the trade and industry of future generations ! After these general remarks on the variety and exuberance of tropical vegetation, Ishall now briefly review those plants which, by their enormous size, their singularityof form, or their frequency in the landscape, chiefly characterize the various regionsof the torrid zone in different paits of the globe. The African Baobab, or monkey-bread tree, (^Adansom.a digitata,) may justlybe called the elephant of the vegetable world. Near the village Gumer, in Fassokl,Russegger

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