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Reason Why

<h2>CHAPTER LXII.</h2> 1204. What are vegetable oils and fats? Vegetable oils and fats constitute, next to starch and sugar, the most important secretion of the vegetable creation. There are very few plants from which some amount of oil cannot be obtained; and those which are famed for yielding it owe their celebrity rather to the abundance that they yield, and the peculiar qualities of their oil, than to the secretion of oil being rare—for probably there is no plant without it. Oil is most commonly found in seeds, as rape-seed, linseed, &c., but it is found also in leaves, as in the rose, sweet-briar, peppermint, &c., where its presence may be recognised by the distinguishing [Pg 307] perfume; and it is also found in the wood of a few trees, such as the sassafras and the sandal-wood; the bark frequently yields an oily secretion. <hr class="bible-verse" /> "Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart; so doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel."—Proverbs xxvii. <hr class="bible-verse" /> The London and North Western Railway Company alone use about 50,000 gallons of oil yearly. 1205. Why are fat and oil found most abundantly in the bodies of animals in cold climates? Because they contribute to keep the bodies of animals warm, not only by their non-conducting property keeping in the heat of the animals, but by supplying carbon abundantly to combine with oxygen during respiration, and thereby developing animal heat. 1206. Why are oil and fat-forming trees found most abundantly in hot climates? Because, in hot countries, the formation of large quantities of fat in animal bodies would oppress living creatures with heat; fats and oils are, therefore, produced in those countries chiefly by vegetables, and are used externally by the Asiatics and Africans as an external unction for cooling the skin, and as perfumes which give inspiriting properties to the air, rendered oppressive by excess of heat. 1207. Why are succulent fruits most abundant in tropical climates? Because they are rendered necessary in those climates by the excessive heat, and are found to have a most beneficial effect in cooling, purifying the blood of the inhabitants of tropical countries; while the grandeur of their foliage, and the richness of their flowers, are in perfect keeping with the intensity of light and heat, and serve, by throwing dense shades over the earth, to cool its surface, and to offer to living creatures a pleasant retreat from the rays of the burning sun. The following sketch of Botanical Geography should be read attentively after the reader has gone through the whole of the Chapters of "Reasons." The technical terms employed in the course of the article are nearly all explained at 1212, and should be committed to memory at the commencement of the perusal. Mimosa means a sensitive plant; concentric zones, circular lines spreading from a centre; arborescent, resembling trees; Gramineæ, grass-like. The botanical names represent individual plants. <hr class="bible-verse" /> "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful:" <hr class="bible-verse" /> 1208. When treating of the geographical distribution of vegetables, we have to mark the general arrangements indicated, and the agencies that have evidently [Pg 308] operated in promoting the diffusion of floral tribes. Vegetation occurs over the whole globe, therefore, under the most opposite conditions. Plants flourish in the bosom of the ocean as well as on land, under the extremes of cold and heat in polar and equatorial regions, on the hardest rocks and the soft alluvium of the plains, amidst the perpetual snow of lofty mountains, and in springs at the temperature of boiling water, in situations never penetrated by the solar rays, as the dark vaults of caverns, and the walls of mines, as well as freely exposed to the influences of light and air. But these diverse circumstances have different species and genera. There is only one state which seems fatal to the existence of vegetable life—the entire absence of humidity. 1209. By species we understand so many individuals as intimately resemble each other in appearance and properties, and agree in all their permanent characters, which are founded in the immutable laws of creation. An established species may frequently exhibit new varieties, depending upon local and accidental causes, but these are imperfectly, or for a limited time, if at all, perpetuated. 1210. A genus comprises one or more species similar to each other, but essentially differing in formation, nature, and in many adventitious qualities from other plants. A tribe, family, group, or order, comprises several genera. 1211. The known number of species in the vegetable kingdom has been gradually enlarged by the progress of maritime and inland discovery; but owing to great districts of the globe not having yet been explored by the botanist, the interior of Africa, and Australia, with sections of America, Asia, and Oceanica, it is impossible to state the exact amount. The successive augmentation of the catalogue appears from the numbers below: <div class="bq"> <table id="VEGETABLE_SPECIES" summary="LIST OF VEGETABLE SPECIES"> <tr> <th class="c1"> </th> <th class="c2">Species.</th> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Theophrastus</td> <td class="c2">500</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Pliny</td> <td class="c2">1,000</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Greek, Roman, and Arabian botanists</td> <td class="c2">1,400</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Bauhin</td> <td class="c2">6,000</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Linnæus</td> <td class="c2">8,800</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Persoon</td> <td class="c2">27,000</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Humboldt and Brown</td> <td class="c2">38,000</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">De Candolle</td> <td class="c2">56,000</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Lindley</td> <td class="c2">86,000</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Hinds</td> <td class="c2">89,000</td> </tr> </table></div> 1212. Vegetable forms are divided into three great classes which differ materially in their structure:—1. Cryptogamous plants—those which have no flowers, properly so called, mosses, lichens, fungi, and ferns: as distinguished from those which are phænogamous, or flower-bearing, to which the two following classes belong. 2. Endogenous plants, which have stems increasing from within, also called Monocotyledons, from having only one seed-lobe, as the numerous grasses, lilies, and the palm family. 3. Exogenous plants, which have stems growing by additions from without, also called Dicoteledons, from the seed consisting of two lobes, the most perfect, beautiful, and numerous class, embracing the forest trees, and most flowering shrubs and herbs. 1213. The exogens furnish examples of gigantic size, and great longevity. In South America on the banks of the Atabapo, Humboldt measured a Bombax caiba more than 120 feet high, and 15 in diameter; and near Cumana, he found [Pg 309] the Zamang del Guayra, a species of mimosa, the pendant branches of the hemispherical head having a circumference of upwards of 600 feet. The Adansonia, or baobab of Senegal, though attaining no great height, rarely more than fifty feet, has a trunk with a diameter sometimes amounting to 34 feet; while the Pinus Lambertiana, growing singly on the plains west of the Rocky Mountains, has been found 250 feet high, 60 feet in circumference at the base, 4½ feet in girth at the height of 190 feet, yielding cones 11 inches round, and 16 long. The Ficus Indicus, or banian tree, sending out shoots from its horizontal branches, which reaching the ground take root, and form new stems till a single tree multiplies almost to a forest, has been observed covering an area of 1700 square yards. <hr class="bible-verse" /> "He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in season: his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper."—Psalm i. <hr class="bible-verse" /> 1214. From the number of concentric zones observed in a transverse section of the stems De Caudolle advances proof of the following ages: <div class="bq"> <table id="AGE_OF_TREES" summary="AGE OF TREES"> <tr> <td class="c1" style="width: 39%;"> </td> <td class="c2" style="width: 40%;"> </td> <td class="c3" style="width: 1%;"> </td> <td class="c1" style="width: 20%;"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Elm</td> <td class="c2">335</td> <td class="c3">years.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Cypress</td> <td class="c2">about 350</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Cheirostemon</td> <td class="c2">400</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Ivy</td> <td class="c2">450</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Larch</td> <td class="c2">576</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Orange</td> <td class="c2">630</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Olive</td> <td class="c2">700</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Oriental Plane</td> <td class="c2">720</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c1">and upwards.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Cedar of Lebanon</td> <td class="c2">800</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Oak</td> <td class="c2">810, 1080, 1500</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Lime</td> <td class="c2">1076, 1147</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Yew</td> <td class="c2">1214, 1458, 2588, 2880</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Taxodium</td> <td class="c2">4000 to 6000</td> <td class="c3" style="width: 1%;">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Baobab</td> <td class="c2">5150</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> </table></div> 1215. Admitting, with Professor Henslow, that De Candolle overrated the ages of these trees one-third, they are examples of extraordinary longevity. Yew trees upwards of 700 years old remain at Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire, as there is historic evidence of their existence in the year 1133. But a yew in the churchyard of Darley-in-the-Dale, Derbyshire, is considered by Mr. Bowman as 2000 years old. 1216. The cryptogamous plants afford the most numerous examples of wide diffusion. A lichen indigenous in Cornwall, sticta aurata, is also a native of the West India Islands, Brazil, St Helena, and the Cape of Good Hope; while 38 lichens and 28 mosses are common to Great Britain and Australia, though the general vegetation of the two districts is remarkably discordant. Some species of endogenous plants are also widely distributed, the Phleum alpinum of Switzerland occurring without the slightest difference at the Strait of Magellan, and the quaking grasses of Europe in the interior of Southern Africa. But only in very few instances are the same species of exogenous plants met with in regions far apart from each other; and generally speaking, in passing from one country to another, we encounter a new flora; for if the same genera occur, the species are not identical, while in districts widely separated the genera are different. 1217. The cryptogamic plants, mosses, lichens, ferns, and fungi, are to the whole mass of phænogamic vegetation in the following proportions in different districts: Equatorial latitudes, 0 deg. to 10 deg.; on the plains, 1-25th, on the mountains, 1-5th; mean latitudes, 45 deg. to 52 deg. ½; high latitudes, 67 deg. 70 [Pg 310] deg., proportion about equal. Thus the proportion of the flowerless vegetation to the flowering increases from the equator to the poles. But the family of ferns, filices, viewed singly, forms an exception to this law, decreasing as we depart from equinoctial countries, being 1-20th in equatorial and 1-70th in mean latitudes, and not found at all in the high latitudes of the new world. <hr class="bible-verse" /> "To give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called Trees of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified."—Isaiah lxi. <hr class="bible-verse" /> 1218. In equinoctial and tropical countries, where a sufficient supply of moisture combines with the influence of light and heat, vegetation appears in all its magnitude and glory. Its lower orders, mosses, fungi, and confervæ, are very rare. The ferns are aborescent. Reeds ascend to the height of a hundred feet, and rigid grasses rise to forty. The forests are composed of majestic leafy evergreen trees bearing brilliant blossoms, their colours finely contrasting, scarcely any two standing together being of the same species. Enormous creepers climb their trunks; parasitical orchidæ hang in festoons from branch to branch, and augment the floral decoration with scarlet, purple, blue, rose, and golden dyes. Of plants used by man for food, or as luxuries, or for medicinal purposes, occurring in this region, rice, bananas, dates, cocoa, cacao, bread-fruit, coffee, tea, sugar, vanilla, Peruvian bark, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmegs, are either characteristic of it as principally cultivated within its limits, or entirely confined to them. 1219. Rice (Oryza-sativa), the chief food of, perhaps, a third of the human race, is cultivated beyond the tropics, but principally within them, only where there is a plentiful supply of water. It has never been found wild; its native country is unknown; but probably southern Asia. 1220. Bananas, or plantains (Musa sapientum et paradisiaca), are cultivated in intertropical Asia, Africa, and America. The latter species occur in Syria. The banana is not known in an uncultivated state. Its produce is enormous, estimated to be on the same space of ground to that of wheat, as 133 to 1, and to that of potatoes as 44 to 1. 1221. Dates (Ph&oelig;nix dactylifera), and cocoa (Cocos nucifera), belonging to the family Palmæ. The palms, remarkable for their elegant forms and importance to man, contribute more than any other trees to impress upon the vegetation of tropical and equinoctial countries its peculiar physiognomy. The date palm is a native of northern Africa, and is so abundant between the Barbary states and the Sahara, that the district has been named Biledul erid, the land of dates. As the desert is approached, the only objects that break the monotony of the landscape are the date palm, and the tent of the Arab. It accompanies the margin of the mighty desert in all its sinuosities from the shores of the Atlantic to the confines of Persia, and is the only vegetable affording subsistence to man that can grow in such an arid situation. The annual produce of an individual is from 150 to 260lbs. weight of fruit. The cocoa palm furnishes annually about a hundred cocoa-nuts. It is spread throughout the torrid zone; but occurs most abundantly in the islands of the Indian archipelago. The family of palms is supposed to contain a thousand species, some of large size, forming extensive forests. 1222. Cacao (Theobrama cacao), from the seeds of which chocolate is prepared, grows wild in central America, and is also extensively cultivated in Mexico, Guatemala, and on the coast of Cumana. 1223. Bread-fruit tree (Artocarpus incisa), a native of the South Sea Islands, and Indian archipelago, grows also in Southern Asia, and has been introduced [Pg 311] into the tropical parts of America; but the fruit is not equal to the banana as an article of human food. <hr class="bible-verse" /> "And they returned and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath-day, according to the commandment."—Luke xxiv. <hr class="bible-verse" /> 1224. Coffee (Coffea Arabica). The bush has probably for its native region the Ethiopian Highlands, from whence it was taken in the fifteenth century to the Highlands of Yemen, the southern part of the Arabian peninsula. It has been introduced, and is now extensively cultivated in British India, Java, Ceylon, the Mauritius, Brazil, and the West Indies, but the quality is inferior, which makes the climate of the Mocha coffee district of importance, as peculiarly favourable to the plant. It grows there on hills described by Niebuhr as being soaked with rain every day from the beginning of June to the end of September, which is carefully collected for the purpose of irrigation during the dry season. Forskhal gives the following temperatures in the district: <div class="bq"> <table id="TEMPERATURES" summary="MOCHA COFFEE DISTRICT TEMPERATURES"> <tr> <td class="c1" style="width: 20%;">Boit el Fakih</td> <td class="c2">March 16,</td> <td class="c3">7 A.M.</td> <td class="c1">76 deg.</td> <td class="c3">1 P.M.</td> <td class="c1">95 deg.</td> <td class="c3">10 P.M.</td> <td class="c2">81 deg.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1" style="width: 20%;">          "</td> <td class="c2">March 18,</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c1">77 deg.</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c1">95 deg.</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">81 deg.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1" style="width: 20%;">Hodeida</td> <td class="c2">March 18,</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c1">72 deg.</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c1">92¾ deg.</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">78 deg.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Bulgosa, a village in the hills</td> <td class="c2">March 20,</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c1">69½ deg.</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c1">85½ deg.</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">73 deg.</td> </tr> </table></div> 1225. Tea (Thea Chinensis). The plant is indigenous in China, Japan, and Upper Assam. In the latter country, it has recently been found in a wild state, and is in process there of extensive cultivation. As the plant is hardy, its culture has very lately been attempted in the South of France, and apparently with complete success. A similar experiment on the burning plains of Algeria completely failed, all the plants being killed by the heat, notwithstanding every precaution. Tea was first introduced into Europe by the Dutch in 1666. The leaves of the coffee-plant have long been used as a substitute for tea, by the lower classes in Java and Sumatra; and recently, Professor Blume, of Leyden, exhibited samples of tea prepared from coffee-leaves, agreeing entirely in appearance, odour, and taste, with the genuine Chinese production. 1226. Sugar-cane (Saccharum officinaram), a species of Gramineæ, occurs to some extent without the tropics, having been cultivated centuries ago in Europe, as at present scantily in the South of Spain. But it properly belongs to the torrid zone, and has for its principal districts, the Southern United States, the West Indies, Venezuela, Brazil, the Mauritius, British India, China, the Sunda and Philippine Islands. The plant was found wild in several parts of America on the discovery of that continent, and occurs in a wild state on many of the islands of the Pacific. 1227. Vanilla (Vanilla aromatica), the fruit of which forms the well-known aromatic, grows wild principally in Mexico. 1228. Peruvian bark (Cinchona officinalis), a forest tree, of which there are several species, furnishing the valuable medicine so called. It is exclusively confined to South America, and grows chiefly on the Andes of Loxa and Venezuela. 1229. Pepper (Piper nigrum) belongs exclusively to the Malabar coast, where it has been found wild, Sumatra, which produces the greatest quantity, Borneo, the Malay peninsula, and Siam. Other species of Piperace&oelig; occur in tropical America. 1230. Cinnamon (Laurus Cinnamomum), a small tree yielding the aromatic bark, is found native only in the island of Ceylon; but another species occurs in Cochin China. [Pg 312] <hr class="bible-verse" /> "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman."—John xv. <hr class="bible-verse" /> 1231. Clove (Myrtus caryophyllus), an evergreen small tree, the dried flower-buds of which form the celebrated aromatic, grows naturally in the Moluccas, whence it has been conveyed to other tropical districts. The island of Amboyna, one of that group, is the principal seat of its cultivation. The lowest temperature there is 72 degs.; the mean temperature of the year 82 degs. 1232. Nutmeg (Myrstica moschata) grows naturally in several islands of the eastern archipelago, but is principally cultivated in the Banda Isles. Tropical families and forms successively vanish with an increase of distance from the equator, and new phases of vegetation mark the transition from hot to temperate climates. Vividly green meadows, abounding with tender herbs, replace the tall rigid grasses which form the impenetrable jungle; and instead of forests composed of towering evergreen trees, woods of the deciduous class appear, which cast their leaves in winter, and hybernate in the colder season, the oak, ash, elm, maple, beech, lime, alder, birch, and sycamore. The cultivation of the vine becomes characteristic, with the perfection of the cereal grasses, and a larger proportion of herbaceous annuals and cryptogamic plants. 1233. The vine (Vitis vinifera) is less impatient of a cold winter than a cool summer. Hence its northern limit, which coincides with lat. 47 deg. 30 min. on the west coast of France, rises in the interior, where, though the winters are colder, the summers are warmer, to lat. 49 degs., cuts the Rhine at Coblentz in lat. 50 deg. 20 min., and ascends to 52 deg. 31 min. in Germany. 1234. Receding further from the equator, magnificent forests of the fir and pine tribe prevail, as in the central parts of Russia, on the southern shores of the Baltic, in Scandinavia, and North America. But some of the cereals are no longer cultivatable, and several timber-trees common to the temperate zone do not reach its northern limits. Gradually all ligneous vegetation disappears entirely as higher latitudes are approached, the woods having first dwindled to mere dwarfs in struggling with the elements, hostile to that state which nature destined them to assume. The limit of the forests is a sinuous line running along the extreme north of the old world; and extending from Hudson's Bay, lat. 60 deg., to the Mackenzie River, lat. 68 deg., and thence to Behring's Strait. The dwarf birch (Betula nana), a mere bush, is the last tree found on drawing near the eternal snow of the pole. At the island of Hammerfest, lat. 70 deg. 40 min., near the North Cape, it rises to about the height of a man, in sheltered hollows between the mountains, its lower branches trailing on the ground, affording a shelter to the ptarmigan. In the polar zone, some low flowering annuals, saxifrages, ranunculi, gentians, chickweeds, and others, flourish during the brief ardent summer; a few perennials also accommodate themselves to the rigorous climate by spreading laterally, never rising higher than four or five inches from the ground; till finally no development of vegetable life is met with, but lichens, and the microscopic forms that colour the snow. 1235. In Europe, wheat ceases with a line connecting Inverness in Scotland, lat. 58 deg., Drontheim in Norway, lat. 64 deg., and Petersburgh in Russia lat. 60 deg. 15 min. Oats reach a somewhat higher latitude. Barley and rye ascend to lat. 70 deg., but require a favourable aspect and season to produce a crop. 1236. The northern limit of the growth of oak, lat. 61 deg., falls short of that of wheat. The oak makes a singular leap at the confines of Europe and Asia, disappearing towards the Ural mountains. This is the case also with the wild-nut and apple. The oak and the wild-nut, however, re-appear suddenly in Eastern Asia, on the banks of the Argoun and the Amour; and the [Pg 313]apple occurs again in the Aleutian Isles. <hr class="bible-verse" /> "He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion."—Jeremiah x. <hr class="bible-verse" /> 1237. The following are the northern limits of several trees in Scandinavia: <div class="bq"> <table style="width:75%;" id="NORTHERN_LIMITS" summary="NORTHERN LIMITS OF TREES IN SCNDINAVIA"> <tr> <td style="width: 96%"> </td> <td style="width: 1%"> </td> <td style="width: 1%"> </td> <td style="width: 1%"> </td> <td style="width: 1%"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1"> </td> <th colspan="4" class="center">Lat.</th> <td class="c3"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Beech, Fagus silvatica</td> <td class="c2">60</td> <td class="c3">deg.</td> <td class="c2">0</td> <td class="c3">min.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Hard Oak, Quercus robur</td> <td class="c2">61</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">0</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Common Elm, Ulmus campestris</td> <td class="c2">61</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">0</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Common Lime, Tilia communis</td> <td class="c2">61</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">0</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Common Ash, Fraxinus excelsior</td> <td class="c2">62</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">0</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Fruit trees</td> <td class="c2">63</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">0</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Hazel, Corylus, avellana</td> <td class="c2">64</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">0</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Spruce Fir, Abies excelsa</td> <td class="c2">67</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">40</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Service Tree, Sorbus aucuparia</td> <td class="c2">70</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">0</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Scotch Fir, Pinus silvestris</td> <td class="c2">70</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">0</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">White Birch, Betula alba</td> <td class="c2">70</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">40</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1">Dwarf Birch, Betula nana</td> <td class="c2">71</td> <td class="c3">"</td> <td class="c2">0</td> <td class="c3">"</td> </tr> </table></div> 1238. Thus distinct vegetable regions are observed on passing from south to north through different climatic zones, defined as to their limits by the isothermal curves, and not by the parallels of latitude. Similar changes of vegetation mark a perpendicular transit through varying climates. A succession of plants appear on the tropical mountains which rise above the snow line, corresponding to those which are encountered in mean and high latitudes. The higher we ascend, the more does the number of the phænogamic class diminish in proportion to the cryptogamic, till only members of the latter family are found, whose further progress upward is arrested by the everlasting snow. The last lichen met with by Saussure on Mont Blanc, Silene acaulis, was also observed by M. Brevais in the neighbourhood of Bosekop, lat. 69 deg. 58 min. where it was vegetating on the seashore, shaded by the last pines of Europe. 1239. Isolated mountains display to the best advantage the effort of climatic change of vegetation. 1240. Etna is divided into three great regions: La Regione Culta, or fertile region; La Regione Sylvosa, or woody region; La Regione Deserta, the bare or desert region. But each of these is susceptible of sub-divisions, defined by the presence of certain families of plants, forming seven botanical zones. 1. The sub-tropical zone, which does not rise more than 100 feet above the level of the sea, is characterised by the palm, banana, Indian fig, sugar-cane, varieties of mimosa and acacia, which with us are only found in conservatories. 2. The hilly zone, rises about 2,000 feet, characterised by the orange, lemon, shaddock, maize, cotton, and grape plants. 3. The woody zone lies between the height of 2,000 and 4,000 feet, where the cork-tree flourishes, several kinds of oak, the maple, and enormous chestnuts. 4. The zone between the height of 4,000 and 6,000 feet is distinguished by the beech, Scotch fir, birch, and, among small plants, by clover, sandwort, chickweed, dock, and plantain. 5. The sub-alpine zone, between the elevation of 6,000 and 7,500 feet, produces the barberry, soap-wort, toad-flax, and juniper. 6. The zone between 7,500 and 9,000 feet, has almost all the plants of the preceding, with the fleshy and jagged groundsel. [Pg 314] <hr class="bible-verse" /> "In the mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it; and it shall bring forth boughs, and bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar: and under it shall dwell all fowl of every wing; in the shadow of the branches thereof shall they dwell."—Ezekiel xvii. <hr class="bible-verse" /> 7. The narrow zone between 9,000 and 9,200 feet, only produces a few lichens, beyond which, there is complete sterility. 1241. The Peak of Teneriffe exhibits five botanical districts, thus distinguished by Von Buch: 1. The region of Africa forms, 0—1,248 feet, comprising palms, bananas, the sugar-cane, various species of arborescent Euphorbiæ, Mesembryanthema, the Dracæna, and other plants, whose naked and tortuous trunks, succulent leaves, and bluish-green tints, are distinctive of the vegetation of Africa. 2. Region of Vines and Cereals, 1,248—2,748 feet, comprising also the olive, and the fruit-trees of Europe. 3. Region of Laurels, 2,748—4,350 feet, including lauri of four species, the wild olive, an oak, the iron-tree, the arbutus, and other evergreens. The ivy of the Canaries and various twining shrubs cover the trunks of the trees, and numerous species of fern occur, with beautiful flowering plants. 4. Region of the Pines, 4,350—6,270, characterised by a vast forest of trees resembling the Scotch fir, intermixed with juniper. 5. Region of the Retama, 6,270—11,061 feet, a species of broom, which forms oases in the midst of a desert of ashes, ornamented with fragrant flowers, and furnishing food to the goats, which run wild on the Peak. A few gramineous and cryptogamic plants are observed higher, but the summit is entirely destitute of vegetation. 1242. There are many plants which can accommodate themselves to the most diverse climates and localities; and therefore ascend from the plains close to the boundary of vegetable life on the highest mountains. But it is the general law in these cases for such plants to be singularly modified in appearance and anatomical structure as they ascend. The spring gentian, Gentiana verna, is one of the exceptions, which Raymond found unaltered at all heights in the Pyrenees. 1243. Trees, plants, and bushes, of humbler growth, which occur on the plains and at great heights, are usually much smaller in the latter situation. The leaves, and everything green about them, dwindle with the increased elevation; and the pure, well defined green is exchanged for an ill-defined light yellow. Singular enough, those parts which seem most capable of resisting cold, as the leaves and stalks, are uniformly subjected to a diminution of their vital functions; while the flowers remain of the same size, are never deformed, and become more dense and richer in their colours. While the Myosotis silvestris becomes stunted, its flowers assume an intense blue—the admiration of the traveller. The flowers of the pale primrose have a much deeper colour on the top of the Faulhorn, while the plant itself is much smaller than its congener on the Swiss plains. The observations of M. Parrot, among others, are to this effect on the flora of the Caucasus, of Ararat, the Swiss and Italian Alps, and the Pyrenees. The arctic flora is similarly distinguished. 1244. The preceding references to different climatic states are, however, perfectly inadequate to explain the phenomena of vegetable distribution. While an analogy is often observable between the plants of different regions under corresponding circumstances of latitude, elevation, and soil, the species are generally found to be different; and usually the botanical character of countries not widely apart from each other, is totally different, though un [Pg 315]der the same parallels. <hr class="bible-verse" /> "From the rising of the sun, unto the going down of the same, the Lord's name is to be praised."—Psalm cxiii. <hr class="bible-verse" /> 1245. Some plants are entirely confined to one side of our planet. The beautiful genus Erica, or heath, of which there are upwards of 300 species, occurs with breaks over a narrow surface, extending from a high northern latitude to the Cape of Good Hope. But the whole continent of America does not contain a single native specimen; nor has a P&oelig;nia been found in it, except a solitary one to the west of the Rocky Mountains. On the other hand, the New World contains many families, as the Cacti, which are not found naturally in the Old. 1246. Some plants occur in a single specific locality, frequently a contracted area, and nowhere else. The beautiful Disa grandiflora is limited to a spot on the top of the Table Mountain at the Cape; and the celebrated cedar of Lebanon appears to be restricted in its spontaneous growth to the Syrian mountains. The small island of St. Helena has an indigenous flora, with a few exceptions different from that of the rest of the globe. 1247. Mountain chains of no great width very commonly divide a totally distinct botany. There is a marked difference in the vegetation of the Chilian and opposite side of the Andes, though the climate as well as the soil is nearly the same, and the difference of longitude very trifling. In North America, two completely different classes of vegetation appear on the two sides of the Rocky Mountains. A variety of oaks, palms, magnolias, azaleas, and magnificent rhododendrons occur on the eastern side, all of which are unknown on the western, the region of the giant pine. 1248. The distinct vegetation possessed by various parts of the globe, has led to its division into botanical kingdoms or phyto-geographical regions, named in general after the genera that are either peculiar to them, or predominant in them. The arrangement of M. Schouw, which is usually adopted, discriminates twenty-five great provinces of characteristic vegetation upon the surface of the earth. In constituting any portion of the globe into a phyto-geographical region, M. Schouw has proceeded upon the following principles:—1. That at least one-half of the species should be indigenous in it. 2. That a-quarter of the genera should also be peculiar to it, or at least should have a decided maximum. 3. That individual families of plants should either be exclusively confined to the region, or have their maxima there. 1249. The phenomena of botanical geography, and the facts of geology, are mutually illustrative. The existing dry land having been upheaved above the waters at different epochs, it may be reasonably inferred that each portion on its emergence received a vegetable creation in harmony with its position. The ultimate constitution of the general surface into different botanical kingdoms would hence follow, each of which has preserved its primitive features, while adjoining, and even far distant foci, have to some extent intermingled their respective products, under control of the natural agencies of diffusion. 1250. The agents that involuntarily officiate in the diffusion of vegetable products are the atmosphere, the waters, and many animals. 1. The impulsion of the atmosphere in its calmest state, is quite sufficient to transport to considerable distances seeds furnished with downy appendages or winglets, as is the case with many plants, with the minute sporules of [Pg 316] cryptogamia, which are light as the finest powder. When ordinary breezes convey the sand-dust of the Sahara a thousand miles or more from the desert, it may be conceived that seeds, which are comparatively heavy, are borne far from home by the hurricane. Two Jamaica lichens, which had never been seen in France before, were found by De Candolle growing on the coast of Brittany, the offspring of sporules which had been swept over the Atlantic. <hr class="bible-verse" /> "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth."—Psalm lxxii. <hr class="bible-verse" /> 2. The mountain torrent washes down into the valley the seeds that have accidentally fallen into it, or have been swept away by its overflows; and hence the plants of the High Alps occur on the plains of Switzerland, which are entirely wanting in France and Germany. Rivers answer the same purpose more extensively, and also the oceanic currents. The nicker-tree, one of the leguminous tribe, has been raised from seed borne across the Atlantic by the Gulf stream. 3. Animals of the sheep and goat kinds, with the horse, deer, buffalo, and others, widely disperse several species of plants, the seeds of which, furnished with an apparatus of barbs and hooks, adhere to their coating. Seeds also of various kinds pass through the digestive organs of birds, uninjured as to their vitality. The little squirrel buries the acorn in the ground for winter provender, and sows an oak, if prevented from returning to the spot. 1251. Plants capable of extended naturalisation, and serviceable as articles of food or luxury, have been widely disseminated by the human race in their migrations. The cerealia afford a striking example. These important grasses known to the ancients, wheat, barley, oats, and rye, were the gifts of the Old World to the New. They are also importations into Europe; but the loose reports of the ancients, and the diligent researches of the moderns, alike leave us in ignorance of their native seat. Probability points to the conclusion that they have spread from the neighbourhood of the great rivers of Western Asia, the primitive location of the human family; and it is not impossible that in that imperfectly explored district, or further east on the Tartarian table-land, some of the cereals may yet be found growing spontaneously. The first wheat sown in North America, consisted of a few grains accidentally found by a negro slave of Cortes, among the rice taken for the support of his army. In South America the first wheat was brought to Lima by one of the early colonists, a Spanish lady, Maria d'Escobar. An ecclesiastic, Jose Rixi, was the first to sow it in the neighbourhood of Quito. 1252. Maize, or Indian corn (Zea mays), has been dispersed in the Old World from the New; and also a more important product, the potato (Solanum tuberosum), the use of which now extends from the extremity of Africa to Lapland. In Chili, the native country of the plant, it occurs at present in a wild state. The Spaniards imported it into Spain, and from thence it was communicated to Italy. It was first made known in England at a subsequent period from Virginia, having been received there from the Spanish colonists in South America, as it is not a native of intervening Mexico. 1253. The grape-vine, so extensively spread over Europe, is probably not indigenous in any part of it. It chiefly owes its diffusion there to the Romans, who received it from the Greeks, to whom it most likely immediately came from the country between the Black and Caspian Seas. The Romans introduced most of the finer European fruit-trees, some from Africa, as the pomegranate, but the great majority from Western Asia, as the or [Pg 317]ange, fig, cherry, peach, apricot, apple, and pear. A variety of the plum, the damson, or damascene, came from the neighbourhood of Damascus during the Crusades. The name of the damask-rose points to the importation of the plant from the same quarter into Europe. <hr class="bible-verse" /> "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven."—Ecclesiastes iii. <hr class="bible-verse" /> The ocean as well as the land has different botanical regions; and changes of the vegetation are observed with the depth analogous to the variations of terrestrial plants with the height. Marine vegetation seems to have its vertical extent determined by the range of light in water, which varies with the power of the sun and the transparency of the water. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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