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Show 206 NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS surface, announce from afar to the attentive beholder the nature of the rock. As the declivities of the Andes, of Peru, Chili, and Mexico, and the mountainous parts of the Canaries, the Antilles, and the Philippines, are all inhabited by men of Spanish descent, and as these are the parts of the earth where (with the exception, perhaps, of the Himalaya and the Thibetian Highlands,) the manner of life of the inhabitants is most affected by and dependent on the form of the earth's surface, so all the expressions which the language of the mother country afforded for denoting the forms of mountains in trachytic, basaltic, and porphyritic districts, as well as in those where schists, limestones, and sandstone are the prevailing rocks, have been happily preserved in daily use. Under such influences, even newly-formed words become part of the common treasure. Speech is enriched and animated by everything that tends to and promotes truth to nature, whether in rendering the impressions received through the senses from the contemplation of the external world, or in expressing thoughts, emotions, or sentiments which have their sources in the inner depths of our being. In descriptions of natural objects or scenery, both in the manner of viewing the phenomena, and in the choice of the expressions employed to describe them, this truth to nature must ever be kept in view as the guiding aim : its attainment will be at once most easily and most effectually secured by simplicity in the narration of what we have ourselves beheld or experienced, and by limiting and individualizing the locality with which the narrative is connected. Generalization of physical views, and the statement of general results, belong rather to the "study of the Cosmos," which, indeed, must ever continue to be to us a science of Induction; but the animated description of organic forms (plants and animals), in their local and picturesque relations to the varied surface of the earth (as a small fragment of the whole terrestrial life), affords materials towards the study of the Cosmos, and also tends to advance it by the stimulus or impulse imparted to the mind when artistic treatment is applied to phenomena of nature on a great scale. Among such phenomena must certainly be classed the vast forest region which, in the tropical portion of South America, fills the great connected basins of the Orinoco and the Amazons. If the name of |