282 COSMOS. 



appear to exhibit no tendency whatever to occur associated 

 together. We have so accustomed ourselves, although erro- 

 neously, to regard Coniferae as a northern form, that I experi- 

 enced a feeling of surprise when, in ascending from the shores 

 of the South Pacific toward Chilpansingo and the elevated 

 valleys of Mexico, between the Venta de la Moxonera and the 

 Alto de los Caxones, 4000 feet above the level of the sea, I 

 rode a whole day through a dense wood of Pinus occidentalis, 

 where I observed that these trees, which are so similar to the 

 Weymouth pine, were associated with fan palms* ( Conjpha 

 ditlcis), swarming with brightly-colored parrots. South Amer- 

 ica has oaks, but not a single species of pine ; and the first 

 time that I again saw the familiar form of a fir-tree, it was 

 thus associated with the strange appearance of the fan palm.f 

 Christopher Columbus, in his first voyage of discovery, saw 

 Conifers and palms growing together on the northeastern ex- 

 tremity of the island of Cuba, likewise within the tropics, and 

 scarcely above the level of the sea. This acute observer, 

 whom nothing escaped, mentions the fact in his journal as a 

 remarkable circumstance, and his friend Anghiera, the secre- 

 tary of Ferdinand the Catholic, remarks with astonishment 

 " that palmeta and pineta are found associated together in 

 the newly-discovered land." It is a matter of much import- 

 ance to geology to compare the present distribution of plants 

 over the earth's surface with that exhibited in the fossil floras 

 of the primitive world. The temperate zone of the southern 

 hemisphere, which is so rich in seas and islands, and where 



* This corypha is the soyate (in Aztec, zoyall), or the Palma dnlce of 

 the natives. See Huruboldt and Bonpland, Synopsis Plant. ^Equinoct. 

 Orbis Novi, t. i., p. 302. Professor Buschmann, who is profoundly ac- 

 quainted with the American languages, remarks, that the Palma soyaf.s 

 is so named in Yepe's Vocabulario de la Lengua Olhomi, and that the 

 Aztec word zoyatl (Molina, Vocabulario en Lengua Mexicana y Caslel- 

 lana, p. 25) recurs in names of places, such as Zoyatitlau and Zoya- 

 panco, near Chiapa. 



t Near Baracoa and Cayos de Moya. See the Admiral's journal of 

 the 25th and 27th of November, 1492, and Humboldt, Examen Critique 

 de VHist. de la Geographic du Noiiveau Continent, t. ii., p. 252, and t. 

 iii., p. 23. Columbus, who invariably paid the most remarkable atten- 

 tion to all natural objects, was the first to observe the difference be- 

 tween Podocarpus and Pinus. " I find," said he, " en la tierra aspera 

 del Cibao pinos que no llevan pinas (fir cones), pero portal orden com- 

 puestos por naturaleza, que (los frutos) parecen azeytunas del Axarafe 

 de Sevilla." The great botanist, Richard, when he published his ex- 

 cellent Memoir on CycaderR and Coniferae, little imagined that before 

 the time of L'Herhier, and even before the end of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury, a navigator had separated Podocarpus from the Abietineae. 



