The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: with that occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so
rich and varied in its productions, and at the same time so
habitable by the European, as this is? Michaux, who knew but part
of them, says that "the species of large trees are much more
numerous in North America than in Europe; in the United States
there are more than one hundred and forty species that exceed
thirty feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain
this size." Later botanists more than confirm his observations.
Humboldt came to America to realize his youthful dreams of a
tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in its greatest perfection
in the primitive forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic
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