42 . COSMOS. 



The specialities both of inorganic and organised matter, 

 classed according to analogy of form and composition, un- 

 doubtedly constitute a most interesting branch of study, but 

 they appertain to a sphere of ideas having no affinity with the 

 subject of this work. 



The description of different countries certainly furnishes 

 us with the most important materials for the composition of "a 

 physical geography; but the combination of these different 

 descriptions, ranged in series, would as little give us a true 

 image of the general conformation of the irregular surface of 

 our globe, as a succession of all the floras of different regions 

 would constitute that which I designate as a Geography of 

 Plants. It is by subjecting isolated observations to the 

 process of thought, and by combining and comparing them, 

 that we are enabled to discover the relations existing in 

 common between the climatic distribution of beings and the 

 individuality of organic forms (in the morphology or descrip- 

 tive natural history of plants and animals) ; and it is by 

 induction that we are led to comprehend numerical laws, the 

 proportion of natural families to the whole number of species, 

 and to designate the latitude or geographical position of the 

 zones in whose plains each organic form attains the maximum 

 of its development. Considerations of this nature, by their 

 tendency to generalization, impress a nobler character on the 

 physical description of the globe ; and enable us to understand 

 how the aspect of the scenery, that is to say, the impression 

 produced upon the mind by the physiognomy of the vegetation, 

 depends upon the local distribution, the number, and the luxu- 

 riance of growth of the vegetable forms predominating in the 

 .general mass. The catalogues of organised beings, to which 

 was formerly given the pompous title of Systems of Nature, 

 present us with an admirably connected arrangement by ana- 

 logies of structure, either in the perfected development of 

 these beings, or in the different phases which, in accordance 

 with the views of a spiral evolution, affect in vegetables the 

 leaves, bracts, calyx, corolla, and fructifying organs ; and in 

 animals, with more or less symmetrical regularity, the cellular 

 and fibrous tissues, and their perfect or but obscurely deve- 

 loped articulations. But these pretended systems of nature, 

 however ingenious their mode of classification may be, do not 

 show us organic beings, as they are distributed in groups 



