File:The Americana - a universal reference library, comprising the arts and sciences, literature, history, biograhy, geography, commerce, etc., of the world (1903) (14750693226).jpg

Identifier: americanaunivers15beac (find matches)
Title: The Americana : a universal reference library, comprising the arts and sciences, literature, history, biograhy, geography, commerce, etc., of the world
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Beach, Frederick Converse, 1848-1918 Rines, George Edwin, 1860- Scientific American, inc
Subjects: Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Publisher: New York : Scientific American compiling dept.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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nd more oftenseen in the western Atlantic, since it annuallyvisits Bermuda and the Antilles to breed, layingbut a single, heavily blotched egg in a hollowof the beach, or sometimes in a rude nest in atree. Consult Newton, Dictionary of Birds(New York 1896). Tropical Forests. The beauty of a tropi-cal forest is greatly overestimated by dwellersin temperate climes. The testimony of nearlyall travelers to the tropics is to the effect thatnowhere did they see such an expanse of flowers,and charming forests as those they had left, andthey all complain of the monotonous greennessof the trees, which have never to prepare forwinter. Where the trees are most immense andcrowded, as in the Amazon district, and in theEast Indies, the forest is lonely and silent,shadowy and sombre in the subdued light. Thetrunks rise without branches for many feet, tiedtogefilier with creepers and lianes, in an indescrib-able confusion of festoons and ropes and cables,reaching from tree to tree, and to the ground;
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TROPICS — TROTTING some flat, seme twisted either around each otheror smothering a tree; some hmp and swaying,others drawn tant Uke the stays of a sliipsmast. Many of them are chmbing palms (Cala-mus) and many are armed with cruel fishhook-like thorns. The lianes, and the trees themselves,support myriads of small epiphytic or parasiticplants, ferns, fungi and countless other species.Overhead the forest is roofed by the tops of thetrees and of the creepers; the foliage is sharplydefined against the sky, even the finely-cut deli-cate leaves of the great leguminous trees charac-teristic of these forests. Nearly all the flowersof the deep forests are confined to this upperstratum, where the suns rays can reach them,and they are not always easily seen, being oftengreen or white, and inconspicuous amid the ver-dure. The flow-ers of the most tropical trees,moreover, are, even when brilliant, very fuga-cious; one reads of people walking through thefallen scarlet petals of a day, as through

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