But we were describing a tropical day. Night is over. The sun rising again in the cloudless sky, the cycle is completed--spring, summer, and autumn, as it were, in one tropical day. The days are more or less like this throughout the year. A little difference exists, between the dry and wet seasons. The periodical phenomena of plants and animals do not take place at about the same time in all the species, or in the individuals of any given species, as they do in temperate countries. The dry season here is not excessive, nor is there any estivation, as in some tropical countries. In these forests the aspect is the same or nearly so every day in the year--budding, flowering, fruiting, and leaf-shedding, are always going on in one species or other. The activity of birds and insects proceeds without interruption, each species having its own breeding-times. The colonies of wasps, for instance, do not die off annually, leaving only the queens, as in cold climates, but the succession of generations and colonies goes on incessantly. It is never either spring, summer, or autumn, but each day is a combination of the three. With the day and night always of equal length, the atmospheric disturbances of each day neutralise themselves before each succeeding morning. With the sun in its course proceeding midway across the sky, and the daily temperature the same within two or three degrees throughout the year, how grand in its perfect equilibrium and simplicity is the march of nature under the equator!