Mr. 11. B. Hinds on Geographic Botany. 11 



II. — Memoirs on Geographic Botany. By Richard Brinsley 

 Hinds, Surgeon, B.N., Fell. Roy. Coll. Surg. 



In the ninth volume of the ^Annals of Natural History^ I have 

 dwelt with some detail on the agents which constitute climate, 

 more particularly as they influence vegetation. It will there be 

 seen that a great number of different climates are produced by 

 the repeated changes in the relations which the constituents bear 

 to each other, and every portion of the globe, of any extent, will 

 produce a state of things influencing its climate, which perhaps 

 it would not be possible to match exactly at any other place. 

 Whether vegetation obeys minutely these movements in climate 

 is yet to be determined, but it is not improbable that there is a 

 very powerful connexion between the flora of any particular re- 

 gion and surrounding circumstances ; as not only every continent 

 has its own peculiar forms, but even difi*erent portions of a con- 

 tinent have an assemblage of forms which are repeated feebly 

 elsewhere. Before, however, adverting to the varieties which 

 vegetation presents, there are some other circumstances for our 

 consideration. 



The earliest mention of the vegetable kingdom is contained in 

 the sacred writings ; we are there informed that the earth brought 

 forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yield- 

 ing fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind. Further than 

 this they do not acquaint us with any facts on the subject, ex- 

 cepting that we find that it occupied one of the earliest of the 

 omnipotent labours, preceding in its existence all other organized 

 beings. Our curiosity as to the early state of vegetation, its 

 amount, or how the whole world has been covered with its mem- 

 bers, remains still unsatisfied. These were left for the subse- 

 quent inquiries of man, and perhaps also for his happiness, 

 since experience has taught us the pleasure to be derived from 

 the exercise of our intellectual faculties and in the gradual ac- 

 cumulation of knowledge. Nor on the other hand can we per- 

 ceive, though the information is scanty, that there is room for 

 any of those restricted ideas which have been entertained by some 

 as to the limited number of vegetable beings at first called into 

 existence, or of the very confined region they were supposed to 

 occupy. The world had been long peopled before we find any 

 additional information, and this is contained in the writings of 

 those philosophers whose names have descended to our times with 

 many of their works. 



At that period very limited ideas prevailed respecting the nu- 

 merical amount of the flora of the world, which has since been 

 discovered to be so vast. The imperfect knowledge of geo- 

 graphy then prevailing, and the small amount of accumulated 



