emerald, and wings of sapphire, as if
any triumph of the jeweller's art could ever vie with that sparkling
epitome of life and light."[30]

Sir Wyville Thomson graphically describes a morning in a Brazilian
forest:--

"The night was almost absolutely silent, only now and then a peculiarly
shrill cry of some night bird reached us from the woods. As we got into
the skirt of the forest the morning broke, but the _reveil_ in a
Brazilian forest is wonderfully different from the slow creeping on of
the dawn of a summer morning at home, to the music of the thrushes
answering one another's full rich notes from neighbouring thorn-trees.
Suddenly a yellow light spreads upwards in the east, the stars quickly
fade, and the dark fringes of the forest and the tall palms show out
black against the yellow sky, and almost before one has time to observe
the change the sun has risen straight and fierce, and the whole
landscape is bathed in the full light of day. But the morning is yet for
another hour cool and fresh, and the scene is indescribably beautiful.
The woods, so absolutely silent and still before, break at once into
noise and movement. Flocks of toucans flutter and scream on the tops of
the highest forest trees hopelessly out of shot, the ear is pierced by
the strange wild screeches of a little band of macaws which fly past you
like the wrapped-up ghosts of the birds on some gaudy old brocade."[31]

Mr. Darwin tells us that nothing can be better than the description of
tropical forests given by Bates.

"The leafy crowns of the trees, scarcely two of which could be seen
together of the same kind, were now far away above us, in another world
as it were. We could only see at times, where there was a break above,
the tracery of the foliage against the clear blue sky. Sometimes the
leaves were palmate, or of the shape of large outstretched hands; at
others finely cut or feathery like the leaves of Mimosae. Below, the tree
trunks were everywhere linked together by sipos; the woody flexible
stems of climbing and creeping trees, whose foliage is far away above,
mingled with that of the taller independent trees. Some were twisted in
strands like cables, others had thick stems contorted in every variety
of shape, entwining snake-like round the tree trunks or forming gigantic
loops and coils among the larger branches; others, again, were of zigzag
shape, or indented like the steps of a staircase, sweeping from the
ground to a giddy hei