Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1879 — NATURE IN EUROPE. [ARTICLE]

NATURE IN EUROPE.

Wonderful Plants, Rocks and Animals of the Warm Countries. » • • ' ■ There is nothing in India that is so constant a surprise as nature. Your eyes are accustomed to your own flowers and forms of forest and garden growths—the oak, the ash, the sycamore, the modest daisy, the wholesome, virtuous clover that blossoms over meadow and valley. You look in vain for the old forms that were so pleasant to you in childhood—that were alwavs friends when the world grew dark and sorrows swept overyour young and trembling life. The trees are new. You have heard of them in poems, in ghost stories, in Araoian tales, but in India they are around you. Here Is the mango, a that gives a pleasant fruit, said to be among the atonements of an Indian residence, but which we shall not see, leaving Hindostan before it ripens. Everyone has been telling us of the comfort we shall find in the mango, and that, although we come from the land of fruits, we shall surrender our peach and pear and Newton pippins to the mango. Ail we have seen of it has been some candied mango, so killed by the sugar that it might as well have been pumpkin or melon rind sent to us by some of the Maharajahs. We have also had it as a curry, but the spices reduced into such a condition that it might have passed for radish or celery. As a tree it is royal and green and rich. Here we see the tamarind,

under which you are forbidden to pitch your tents because of the unwholesome exhalations. Here is the pi pel and the Japanese acacia; the banana, with its hospitable leaves; cam bools, the orange and the lemon; cactus until you are weary of cactus; a very world of ferns, and the rose in * endless profusion. Animal life has a freedom that is usual to our rapacious eyes—accustomed as we are to look upon everything that God has made as something for man to kill. Here the religion of the natives, which throws over all animal nature protection, has Its influence. As you stroll over the walks of an Indian garden, or look out upon an ludian forest, you see animal life in ail forms. The monkey is more common than squirrels at home, and over your table as you gather about it the birds of prey assemble and circle around and around until your meal is done and it comes their turn to take your place.—[Calcutta Letter.