Now night comes on, not, as in temperate climes, with a hush and a silence that are almost breathless, but with a thousand strange and formidable sounds. In Asia, in Africa, in America, as well as in the great islands of the Pacific Ocean, the forests and the savannahs re-echo all night with discordant cries. The branches are torn down with a crash as the beasts of prey sweep past, and earth resounds beneath their headlong steps. It is no longer the gay, fresh movement of happy life which in the golden noon of day converts the forest into a veritable Eden; it is the rush to and fro of scattered animals, pressed by hunger and thirst, either in flight or pursuit; it is the roar of rage or the wail of agony; it is, in a word, the mêlée of sharpened appetites; it is the "Witches' Sabbath" of the savage world, at which no European, however hardened by the perils of an adventurous career, can be present for the first time without experiencing a deep emotion of melancholy and apprehension. CHAPTER II. VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE FORESTS OF THE OLD WORLD. I do not think that in all Europe, nor, indeed, in the entire Temperate Zone of the Old World, exists such an agglomeration of plants and trees as may merit the appellation of "primeval" or "virgin forest." At all events, this forest, if it really exists, will assuredly be composed of the very trees which we see every day in our own woods, our fields, our parks, and even in our towns, and which have long ceased to awaken in us the idea of wild nature. With the woods of Great Britain, France, or Spain we are all familiar:-- "The beam Of noon is broken there by chestnut boughs Down the steep verdant sides; the air So freshened by the leaping stream, which throws Eternal showers of spray on the mossed roots Of trees, and veins of turf, and long dark shoots Of ivy-plants, and fragrant hanging bells Of hyacinths, and on late anemones That muffle its wet banks."[158]