PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 221 



nitude and mass from which the total impression of a district 

 receives its character of individuality. Among the principal 

 forms of vegetation there are, indeed, some which constitute 

 entire families, according to the so-called " natural system" of 

 botanists. Bananas and Palms, Casuarineae and Coniferse, 

 form distinct species in this mode of arrangement. The 

 systematising botanist, however, separates into different groups 

 many plants which the student of the physiognomy of nature 

 is compelled to associate together. Where vegetable forms 

 occur in large masses, the outlines and distribution of the 

 leaves, and the form of the stems and branches lose their indi- 

 viduality and become blended together. The painter — and 

 here his delicate artistical appreciation of nature comes espe- 

 cially into play — distinguishes between pines or palms and 

 beeches in the background of a landscape, but not between 

 forests of beech and other thickly foliated trees. 



The physiognomy of nature is principally determined by 

 sixteen forms of plants. I merely enumerate such as I have 

 observed in my travels through the old and new world during 

 many years' study of the vegetation of different latitudes, 

 between the parallels of 60° north and 12° south. The number 

 of these forms will no doubt be considerably increased 

 by travellers penetrating further into the interior of conti- 

 nents, and discovering new genera of plants. We are still 

 wholly ignorant of the vegetation of the south-east of Asia, 

 the interior of Africa and New Holland, and of South America 

 from the Amazon to the province of Chiquitos. Might not a 

 region be some day discovered in which ligneous fungi, Ceno- 

 myce rangiferina, or mosses, form high trees? Neckera den- 

 dro'ides, a German species of moss, is in fact arborescent, and 

 the sight of a wood of lofty mosses could hardly afford greater 

 astonishment to its discoverers than that experienced by 

 Europeans at the aspect of arborescent grasses (bamboos) and 

 the tree-ferns of the tropics, which are often equal in height 

 to our lindens and alders. The maximum size and decree of 

 development attainable by organic forms of any genus, whe- 



