162 Analysis of Scientific Books and Memoirs. 



Tournefort, ( Voyage au Levant,) remarked, that on Mount Ararat the 

 vegetation changed according to the elevation ; that at the foot the plants of 

 Asia Minor ; at the middle, those of France ; and at the summit the plants 

 of Lapland showed themselves. Linne in his treatise " de Telluris Habitabi- 

 lis Incremento," pursued this a little farther. In the " Philisophia Botanica," 

 and in the Essay " Stationes Plant a rum," he proposed a terminology with 

 reference to the localities of Plants. In another treatise, Colonial Planta- 

 rum," he speaks especially of the migration of plants ; in " Flora Lappo- 

 nica," he gave, not merely an enumeration of the plants which occur in 

 Lapland, but also hints of the variations, which difference of situation and 

 of elevation above the sea, cause in vegetation. Similar general views 

 are found in Holler's " Hisloria Stirpium Helvetia," and in Forskiils 

 " Flora JEgyptico-Arahica." 



The penetrating Adanson necessarily fell upon botanico-geographical 

 ideas in his work entitled " Families des Plantes ;" and he brought for- 

 ward several observations, which might direct attention to the distribu- 

 tion of the families of plants. Saussure, who instituted many inquiries 

 connected with vegetable physiology, was consequently attentive to the in- 

 fluence of climate on plants ; he gave notices of the height of plants above 

 the sea, and was probably the first who made use of barometrical measure- 

 ments with this view. Reynier wrote an essay in the " Journal de Phy- 

 sique," in which the influence of difference of elevation on plants,, in par- 

 ticular, is well treated of. Ramond gave some information concerning the 

 height of plants above the sea in the Pyrenees. Young, in his tour, treats 

 of the limits of the most important cultivated plants ; he determined the 

 most Northern limits of the Olive, the Vine, and Maize. Giraud Soula- 

 vie distinguished in the " V Histoire nalurelle de la France meridionale," be- 

 tween the regions of the Orange, the Olive, the Vine, the Chesnut, and 

 the Alpine region, and thus gave a not unimportant hint towards the di- 

 vision of a country in a vegeto-geographic view. In several manuals, 

 for example Wildenow's " Grundris," and Sencbier's " Physiologie vege- 

 tale," T. 5, may be found a chapter under different titles, for vegeto-geo- 

 graphic materials, but these are mixed with others, and cited in a very 

 desultory manner. 



Thus it stood with the geography of plants at the end of the last century. 

 In the present century, on the other hand, it has made great advances. 

 Stromeyer in 1800 published his dissertation, in which he brings forward a 

 summary and sketch of what he calls the Geographical History of Plants, 

 and treats of one branch of it, namely, on the limits of the vegetable king- 

 dom. Treviranus's " Biologie," second volume, contains several planto- 

 geographical ideas ; he was doubtless the first, who, with any degree of 

 perfection, paid attention to the distribution of the vegetable families on 

 the globe ; he divided, indeed, its surface into different regions or principal 

 Floras ; but his want of materials caused the results, for the most part, to 

 be uncertain, and some, altogether erroneous. L. v. Buch, in his travels 

 in Norway and Lapland, attended to the planto-geographic phaenomena; 



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