The immense forests of Brazil and Guiana are for the whole world an inexhaustible storehouse of woods for dyeing and cabinet work. They spread their dense masses of foliage along the borders of the sea, where the Mangroves (_Rhizophora mangle_) plunge their adventitious roots into the mud inundated by the surging tides of those regions, and form a kind of impenetrable palisade, behind which grow in infinite variety trees of the costliest timber. Such are the _Swieteniæ_, or Mahogany trees; the _Ferolia Guyanensis_, which supplies the well-known rose or satin wood; the _Jacaranda Brasiliensis_, and the _Dalbergia_, which yield the violet ebony; the _Sterculia acuminata_, whose flowers exhale a foetid odour, and whose timber, called "stinkwood," is nevertheless held in high esteem on account of its durability, the fineness of its texture, and the excellent polish of which it is susceptible. Nor must we forget the _Cæsalpineæ_, whose woods are impregnated with a red colouring matter which varies in tint according to the species, and which are largely employed by the dyer under the names of "Brazil wood" and "Pernambuco wood." A great number of other woods which we procure from these countries, and which are in daily use in cabinet work, toys, marquetry, and dyeing, belong to vegetable species as yet undetermined. We might, however, almost venture to assert that whatever tree you accidentally and at haphazard struck down in these forests, either its timber, bark, or roots would be found capable of being utilized. * * * * * I have not mentioned, among the species proper to the Forests of the New World, those which are common with our own, and which abound upon elevated lands. The extraordinary height to which not only isolated mountains, but whole districts rise, in the vicinity of the Equator, and the low temperature which is the consequence of this elevation, provide the inhabitant of the Torrid Zone with a remarkable spectacle. For while, as Humboldt remarks, he may look around him upon groves of palms and bananas, he also sees those vegetable forms which are regarded as more particularly belonging to the countries of the North. Cypresses, firs, and oaks, barberries and alders, closely resembling our own, cover the table-lands of Southern Mexico and that part of the Andes which the Equator traverses. Thus Nature allows the denizen of the Torrid Zone to see, without quitting his native land, all the vegetable forms of the earth, at the same time that from one pole to the other the entire vault of heaven reveals to his gaze its luminous worlds.