STUDY V 



297 



luccas, which flower only in the night-time. Nay, 

 his remotenefs from our Hemifphere does not de- 

 ftroy in it the power of Nature. At that feafon 

 vegetate mod of the mofles which clothe the rocks 

 with an emerald-coloured green; and then the 

 trunks of trees cover themfelves, in humid fitua- 

 tions, with plants imperceptible to the naked eye, 

 called AInium and Lichen, which give them the ap- 

 pearance, in frofty weather, of columns of green 

 bronze. Thefe vegetations, in the very feverity of 

 Winter, overturn all our reafonings, refpeding the 

 univerfal effefts of heat, as plants, of an organiza- 

 tion fo extremely delicate, feem to need, in order 

 to their expaniion, a temperature the moft gentle. 



Again, the fall of the leaf itfelf, which we have 

 been taught to confider as an effeâ: of the Sun's 

 abfence, is not occafioned by the cold. If the palm 

 retains it's foliage, all the year round, in the South, 

 the fir is equally an evergreen in the North. The 

 birch, it is true, the larch, and feveral other fpe- 

 cies of trees, fhed their leaves in northern Cli- 

 mates, on the approach of Winter ; but a fimilar 

 depredation is likewife made on other trees, to the 

 Southward. It istherefinous fubftance, we are told, 

 which preferves the foliage of the fir in the North : 

 but the larch, which is likewife a refinous plant, 

 is flripped of it's verdure in Winter ; whereas the 

 filaria, the ivy, the privet, and many other fpecies, 



which 



