Where the banana grows, the animal system is indolent, and pampered at the cost of higher qualities; the man is sensual and cruel;" and we may add that where wheat grows, there is civilization, where rice is the staple, there mental vigor is relaxed. Heat and moisture being the great vegetative stimulants, tropical lands in proximity to the sea are covered with eternal verdure. Little or no labor is required to sustain life; for food there is the perpetually ripening fruit, a few hours' planting, sometimes, being sufficient to supply a family for months; for shelter, little more than the dense foliage is necessary, while scarcely any clothing is required. But although heat and moisture, the great vegetative stimulants, lie at the root of primitive progress, these elements in superabundance defeat their own ends, and in two ways: First, excessive heat enervates the body and prostrates the mind, languor and inertia become chronic, while cold is invigorating and prompts to activity. And in tropical climates certain hours of the day are too hot for work, and are, consequently, devoted to sleep. The day is broken into fragments; continuous application, which alone produces important results, is prevented, and habits of slackness and laxity become the rule of life. Satisfied, moreover, with the provisions of nature for their support, the people live without labor, vegetating, plant-like, through a listless and objectless life. Secondly, vegetation, stimulated by excessive heat and moisture, grows with such strength and rapidity as to defy the efforts of inexperienced primitive man; nature becomes domineering, unmanageable, and man sinks into insignificance. Indeed the most skillful industry of armed and disciplined civilization is unable to keep under control this redundancy of tropical vegetation. The path cleared by the pioneer on penetrating the dense undergrowth, closes after him like the waters of the sea behind a ship; before the grain has time to spring up, the plowed field is covered with rank weeds, wild flowers, and poisonous plants no less beautiful than pernicious. I have seen the very fence-posts sprouting up and growing into trees. So destructive is the vegetation of the Central American lowlands, that in their triumphal march the persistent roots penetrate the crevices of masonry, demolish strong walls, and obliterate stupendous tumuli. The people whose climate makes carbonized food a necessity, are obliged to call into action their bolder and stronger faculties in order to obtain their supplies, while the vegetable-eater may tranquilly rest on bounteous nature. The Eskimo struggles manfully with whale, and bear, and ice, and darkness, until his capacious stomach is well filled with heat-producing food, then he dozes torpidly in his den while the supply lasts; the equatorial man plucks and eats, basks in the open air, and sleeps. [Sidenote: UNMANAGEABLENESS OF REDUNDANT NATURE.]