118 Picture of' Vegetatum oil the Surface of the Globe. 



With regard to the place which she has to embelhsh, she as- 

 sumes the character of adaptation which associates best with the 

 aspect of the locaUty. Gay and smiling upon the banks of 

 streams, elegant and graceful in the valleys, rich and majestic in 

 the great plains, she is no longer the same when she mounts the 

 burning rock, or when she struggles upon the Alps with the 

 snow and ice. Thus, in this admirable distribution of vegetables 

 upon the surface of the earth, no place has been forgotten ; all 

 its parts, if we except the sand of the desert, have been invested 

 with the clothing which best suits them. Twenty, thirty leagues, 

 or more, of plain, in the same country, and with the same ex- 

 posure, would produce throughout nearly the same vegetables ; 

 but if this plain be intersected by forests, furrowed by valleys, 

 bristled by rocks and mountains, watered by springs ; if the soil 

 is variable, if it is hujnid or dry, composed of peat, or of a 

 chalky nature, the mass of vegetation will equally vary with 

 each change of situation and of temperature. 



If the localities of the same country present very different 

 plants, this effect is still more striking, in proportion as we ad- 

 vance from south to north, from east to west, and especially 

 when we pass from one continent to another; whether we tra- 

 verse the burning regions of Africa, the vast countries of Asia, 

 or the numerous islands of America. In the greater number of 

 these countries, the vegetation is so abundant, so varied in its 

 forms, so different from that with which we are acquainted, that 

 often we could scarcely give credit to travellers, were not their 

 relations confirmed by the possession of the objects of which they 

 speak ; although, in our possession, they are isolated, mutilated, 

 and altered. It is in their native place that we must observe 

 them, to form an idea of the richness and of the beautiful order 

 which nature has established, in all her productions. Let us 

 listen, upon this subject, to one of our most celebrated travellers 

 Baron Humboldt. 



" It is," says he, in his Tableaux de la Natwe, " under the 

 ardent sun of the torrid zone, that the most majestic forms of 

 vegetation are developed. In place of those lichens and thick 

 mosses, which, amid the hoarfrosts of the north, invest the bark 

 of trees ; beneath the tropics, on the contrary, the odorous va- 

 nilla, and the cymUdiay animate the trunk of the acagou (ana- 



