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CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE BOTANICAL GEOGRAPHY 

 OF THE SOUTH OF EUROPE. 



By Professor Link. 



The Flora of a country constitutes one of its chief characteristics : 

 to ask why a plant occupies this or that locality, is to ask why the 

 Crow has not the plumage of the Peacock. It is not easy to find 

 plants which characterize the longitude of a place, as well as its lati- 

 tude and altitude. Those must be selected which are widely distri- 

 buted, viz., those which Humboldt calls social plants, which are not 

 readily propagated by means of their seeds — as these may be easily 

 conveyed from one country to another — and least of all those which 

 grow amongst corn. Our beautiful corn-flower (the C. cyanus), 

 which ornaments our northern fields, I, however, once found in Por- 

 tugal. And when even the selection be made, it is requisite to have 

 been long or frequently in a country to define with accuracy the li- 

 mits of a plant. 



It is a well-known fact that many, but not all, of the plants of the 

 northern plains are found in the south, upon the mountains ; and al- 

 though such plants may very conveniently indicate the climatic ana- 

 logies of mountains, yet they cannot be applied to the determination 

 of the climatic analogies of plains whence, at all events, we start. 

 They likewise must ascend mountains by degrees, and not make the 

 extraordinary leap of the Sandthorn, Hippophcea rhamnoides ; for 

 we can travel from Riigen to Geneva without finding it but at those 

 two places. It is fortunate when the characteristic plant is so well 

 known as not to require accurate botanical knowledge to make the 

 requisite determination. The Common Whortleberry, Vaccinium 

 myrtillus, is a plant well adapted to indicate the elevation of the sur- 

 face. It gi'ows in northern Germany, in the woods of the plains. 

 It then gradually ascends. At Friburg, in Baden, it is found only 

 upon the higher mountpins ; in Switzerland, which itself is much ele- 

 vated, it grows in the woods of the first range of Alps, and is then 

 again not found until we reach the h\gh.AIpe di Caporagheno, above 

 Fivizzans, where it grows in the meadows with ColchirMm autum- 

 nale. It was there met with by my deceased friend, Fr. Hoflinann, 

 who visited the spot shortly after me. And, lastly, it is only again to 

 be found upon the elevated Majella, in the Abruzzi. 



But we will return to the plains, and there observe the plants which 



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