xxli INTRODUCTION. 



step. With every altered condition and circumstance new plants start up. 

 The mountain side has its own races of vegetable inliabitants, and the 

 valleys have theirs ; the tribes of the sand, the granite, and the limestone 

 are all different ; and the sun does not shine upon two degrees on the surface 

 of this globe the vegetation of which is identical : for every latitude has a 

 Flora of its own. In short, the forms of seas, lakes, and rivers, islands 

 and peninsulas, hills, valleys, plains, and mountains, are not so infinitely 

 diversified as that of the vegetation which adorns them.* 



Botanists have gathered together these endless forms, have studied and 

 arranged them, and calculated their numbers, which amount to more than 

 82,000 species : a mighty host whose ranks are daily swelled by new 

 recruits. 



This vast assemblage has not been gathered together in a few years ; it 

 is coeval with man, and we cannot but feel that the study of the distinctions 

 between one plant and another commenced with the first day of the creation 

 of the human race. The name indeed of Botany is modern ; but its anti- 

 quity dates from the appearance of om- first parents. We may assume it as 

 a certain fact that the Vegetable Kingdom was the first to engage the atten- 

 tion of man, for it was more accessible, more easily turned to useful purposes, 

 and more directly in contact with hhn than the Animal. Plants must have 

 yielded man his earliest food, his first built habitation ; his utensils and his 

 weapons must alike have been derived from the same source. This could 

 not fail to produce experience, and especially the art of distinguishing one kind 

 of plant from another, if it were only as a means of recognising the useful and 

 the worthless species, or of remembering those in which such quahties were 

 most predominant. This would involve from the very beginning the con- 

 trivance of names for plants, together with the collection of individuals into 

 species ; and the mental process by which this was unconsciously effected 

 gradually ripened into the first rude classifications that we know of. By 

 placing together individuals identical in form and the uses they could be 

 appHed to, species were distinguished ; and by applying a similar pro- 

 cess to the species themselves, groups analogous to what we now call 

 genera were obtained. The last step was to constitute classes, which were 

 recognised under the well-known names of " grass, and herbs yielding seed, 

 and fruit trees yielding fruit. 



^' It is in the tropica that the prodigious diversity of appearance among plants is most strikingly exem- 

 plified. The beautiful forest scene, given as a frontispiece to this work, is copied from a plate in the 

 Flora Brasiliensis of Dr. Von Martins, who describes it thus: "The landscape is divided into two 

 unequal parts by a tree ( * ) rising to the height of 70 or 80 feet ; it is Eschweilera angustifolia. It is 

 overrun with ropes which cling around it, or hang do^vn in various festoons ; these ropes yield a milky 

 white or yellowish juice when wounded, and probably belong to the Dogbanes or Asclepiads ; other 

 twiners, decorated with tine, lai-ge, beautifully green leaves, consist of species of Banisteria, Smilax, 

 Serjania and Bignonia, voluptuously intertwined and entangled. A little above there is a tuft of the 

 large leaves of Anthericum glaucum, and from the summit of aU hangs down some unknown kind of 

 Bromelwort. On the left stands a slender Acacia, whose bark is embraced by some parasitical climber ; 

 then comes the Couratari legalis, a high tree, whose timber is used in house-building ; it forms a stem 

 60 or 70 feet high without a branch, and then spreads into a hemispherical head : owing to the slowness 

 of its growth it is overrun with epiphj-tes. In front of the Acacia is a low tree with a close head and a 

 shining bark ; that is a Ficus americana, and Banisterias are shooting downwards from among its 

 branches. Before this lie the bones of some fallen giant of the forest, overspread with great tufts of 

 Anthericum and Epiphyllum phyllanthus. Close by, some Psychotria expands its large leaves and wide 

 branches. A Heliconia and a Phrynium start from the mud and marshy foreground ; a great patch of 

 Anthericum umbellatum flourishes on the rotten trunk, and just in front is a group of Agarics, such as 

 we see in the woods of Europe. The tall tree on the right of Eschweilera, with a smooth bark and 

 pinnated leaves, is an Inga ; next it is a small bush of Leandra scabra, behind which is a thicket of 

 Palicuria and Renealmia nutans, backed by the Eriodendron leiantherum. The beautiful Palm to the 

 right of them is Geonoma Pohliana. The foreground on the right is occupied by Ficus longifolia, con- 

 spicuous with its ample foliage, and loaded with epiphytes of various kinds, especially with Anthericum 

 glaucum, umbellatum, and longifolium, and Caladium auritum. These and different kinds of Bilbergia 

 have also taken possession of the rotten trunks in the neighbourhood. Near these is the white-barked 

 Cecropia peltata, with large green leaves hoary with down on the under side." The cable-like climbers 

 on the extreme right are not named by Dr. Von Martins. 



