298 TIEWS, &C. PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



Chesnuts, and Vines. In Europe, Date Palms, together with 

 Chamoerops humilis, grow in the parallels of 43-§° and 44°, 

 as, for instance, on 'the Genoese Rivera del Ponente, near 

 Bordighera, between Monaco and San Stefano, where there is 

 a palm grove, numbering more than 4000 trees ; also in Dal- 

 matia, near Spalatro. It is remarkable that the Chameerops 

 humilis is of frequent occurrence in the neighbourhood of Nice 

 and in Sardinia, whilst it is not found in the Island of Corsica, 

 lying between the two. In the New Continent, the Chamserops 

 palmetto, which is sometimes more than 40 feet high, does not 

 advance further north than 34°; a circumstance that may be 

 explained by the inflection of the isothermal lines. In the 

 southern hemisphere, Robert Brown" 4 found that palms, of 

 which there are only very few (six or seven) species, advance 

 as far as 34°in New Holland; while Sir Joseph Banks saw an 

 Areca, in New Zealand, as far as 38°. Africa, which, contrary 

 to the ancient and still extensively diffused opinion, is poor in 

 species of palms, exhibits only one palm {Hyphame coriacea) 

 which advances south of the equator, only as far as Port 

 Natal, in 30° lat. The continent of South America presents 

 almost the same limits. East of the chain of the Andes, in the 

 Pampas of Buenos Ayres, and in the Cis-Plata province, 

 palms extend, according to Auguste de St.-Hilaire,f as far as 

 34° and 35°. The Coco de Chile, (our Jubaea spectabilisr), the 

 only species of palm indigenous in Chili, advances on the 

 western side of the chain of the Andes, according to Claude 

 Gay,;}: to an equal latitude, viz., to the Rio Maule. 



I will here subjoin the aphoristic observations which, in 

 March, 1801, I noted down while on board ship, at the 

 moment we were leaving the palm region surrounding the 

 mouth of the Rio Sinu, west of Darien, and were setting sail 

 for Cartagena de Indias. 



" In the space of two years, we have seen as many as 

 27 different species of palms in South America. How many 

 then must have been observed by Commerson, Thunberg, 

 Banks, Solander, the two Forsters, Adanson, and Sonnerat, on 

 their extensive travels ! Yet, at the moment I am writing, 

 our vegetable systems recognise scarcely more than from 



* General remarks on the Botany of Terra Australis, p. 45. 



f Voyage an Bresil, p. 60. 



X Compare also Darwin, Journal, Ed. of 1845, pp. 244, 256. 



