448 COSMOS. 



oranges and laurels, with pines and date-trees; the lattet 

 (which, with the exception of the small Chamaerops, origin- 

 ally a native of European sea-shores, was the only member of 

 the noble family of palms known from personal observation), 

 was generally represented as having a snake-like and scaly 

 trunk,* and long served as the representative of tropical 

 vegetation ; as, in like manner, Pinus pinea is even still very 

 generally supposed to furnish an exclusive characteristic of 

 the vegetable forms of Italy. The contour of high mountain- 

 chains was but little studied, and snow-covered peaks, which 

 projected beyond the green Alpine meadows, were, at that 

 period, still regarded by naturalists and landscape painters as 

 inaccessible. The physiognomy of rocky masses seems scarcely 

 to have excited any attempt at accurate representation, 

 excepting where a water-fall broke in foam over the moun- 

 tain side. We may here remark another instance of the 

 diversity of comprehension manifested by a free and artistic 

 spirit in its intimate communion with nature. Rubens, who, 

 in his great hunting pieces, had depicted the fierce move- 

 ments of wild animals with inimitable animation, succeeded, 

 as the delineator of historical events, in representing, with 

 equal truth and vividness, the form of the landscape in the 

 waste and rocky elevated plain surrounding the Escurial.f 



The delineation of natural objects included in the branch of 

 art at present under consideration, could not have gained in 

 diversity and exactness, until the geographical field of view 

 became extended, the means of travelling in foreign countries 

 facilitated, and the appreciation of the beauty and configura- 

 tion of vegetable forms, and their arrangement in groups of 

 natural families, excited. The discoveries of Columbus, Vasco 

 de Gama, and Alvarez Cabral, in Central America, Southern 

 Asia, and the Brazils ; the extensive trade in spices and drugs 

 carried on by the Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, and Flem- 

 ings, and the establishment of botanical gardens at Pisa, 

 Padua, and Bologna, between 1544 and 1568, although not 

 yet furnished with hot-houses properly so called, certainly 



* Some strangely fanciful representations of date palms, which have 

 a knob in the middle of the leafy crown, are to be seen in an old pic- 

 ture of Cima da Conegliano, of the school of Bellino (Dresden Gallery, 

 1835, No. 40). 



f Dresden Gallery, No. 917. 



