Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
from the most distant regions of the earth, and exhibit them in a proximity to each other
which never occurs in nature. A hundred distinct plants, all with bright, or strange, or gor-
geous flowers, make a wonderful show when brought together; but perhaps no two of these
plants could ever be seen together in a state of nature, each inhabiting a distant region or a
different station. Again, all moderately warm extra-European countries are mixed up with
the tropics in general estimation, and a vague idea is formed that whatever is pre-eminently
beautiful
must
come from the hottest parts of the earth. But the fact is quite the contrary.
Rhododendrons and azaleas are plants of temperate regions, the grandest lilies are from tem-
perate Japan, and a large proportion of our most showy flowering plants are natives of the
Himalayas, of the Cape, of the United States, of Chili, or of China and Japan, all temperate
regions. True, there are a great number of grand and gorgeous flowers in the tropics, but the
proportion they bear to the mass of the vegetation is exceedingly small; so that what appears
an anomaly is nevertheless a fact, and the effect of flowers on the general aspect of nature is
far less in the equatorial than in the temperate regions of the earth.
