e prevailing
trees; and many beautiful forms of inga, acacia, and mimosa, grew
around. Myrtles, too, mingled their foliage with wild limes, their
branches twined with flowering parasites, as the climbing _combretum_,
with its long flame-like clusters, convolvuli, with large white
blossoms, and the beautiful twin-leaved bauhinia.

It was a wild garden of flowers--a shrubbery of nature's own planting.
The eye, wandering through the vistas and glades, beheld almost every
form of inflorescence. There were the trumpet-shaped bignonias--
convolvuli in pendulous bells--syngenesists disposed in spreading
umbels; and over them, closely set upon tall spikes, rose the showy
blossoms of the bromelias--aloes and _dasylyrium_. Even from the tops
of the highest trees hung gaudy catkins, wafted to and fro by the light
breeze, mingling their sheen and their perfume with the floral
_epiphytes_ and parasites that clustered around the branches.

I could not help thinking that these flowers are gifted with life, and
enjoy, during their short and transient existence, both pleasure and
pain. The bright warm sun is their happiness, while the cold cloudy sky
is the reflection of their misery.

As I rode onward, another reflection passed through my mind; it was
caused by my perceiving that the atmosphere was charged with pleasant
perfumes--literally loaded with fragrance. I perceived, moreover, that
the same breeze carried upon its breath the sweet music of birds, whose
notes sounded clear, soft, and harmonious.

What closet-slanderer hath asserted that the flowers of this fair land
are devoid of fragrance--that its birds, though brightly plumed, are
songless?

Ah, Monsieur Buffon! with all your eloquence, such presumptive assertion
will one day strip you of half your fame. You could never have
approached within two hundred paces of a _Stanhopea_, of the _epidendrum
odoratum_, of the _datura grandiflora_, with its mantle of snow-white
blossoms? You could never have passed near the pothos plant, the
serbereae, and tabernamon taneae, the callas, eugenias, ocotas, and
nictiginas?--you could never have ridden through a chapparal of acacias
and mimosas--among orchids whose presence fills whole forests with
fragrant aroma?

And more, Monsieur! you could never have listened to the incomparable
melody of the mock-bird--the full, charming notes of the blue
song-thrush--the sweet warbling voices of the silvias, finches, and
tanagers, that n