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Show THE NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST. IF the vivid appreciation and sentiment of nature which differ so greatly in nations of different descent, and if the natural character and aspect of the countries which those nations now inhabit, or which have been the scene of their earlier wanderings or abode, have rendered different languages more or less rich in well-defined and characteristic expressions denoting the forms of mountains, the state of vegetation, the appearance of the atmosphere, and the contour and grouping of the clouds, it is also true that long use, and perhaps their arbitrary employment by literary men, ~ave diverted many such words from their original meaning. Terms have been gradually regarded as synonymous which ought to have been preserved distinct; and thus languages have lost part of the vigour and the grace, as well as the fidelity, which they might otherwise have been capable of imparting to descriptions of natural scenery and of the characteristic physiognomy of a landscape. With the view of showing how much an intimate acquaintance and contact with nature, and the wants and necessities of a laborious nomade life, may increase the riches of a language, I would recall the numerous characteristic appellations which may be used in Arabic (1) and in Persian to distinguish plains, steppes, and deserts, according as they are quite bare, covered with sand, broken by tabular masses of rock, or interspersed with patches of pasturage, or with long tracts occupied by social plants. Scarcely less striking is it to observe in the old Castilian idiom (2) the many expressions afforded for describing the physiognomy of mountain-masses, and more particularly for designating these features which, recurring in every zone of the earth's 18 |