356 COSMOS. 



graphical distribution determines, together with the individual 

 form of the vegetable world, the size and type of leaves and 

 flowers, in fact, the principal physiognomy of the district;* 

 its character being but little, if at all, influenced by the ever- 

 moving forms of animal life, which, by their beauty and diver- 

 sity, so powerfully affect the feelings of man, whether by 

 exciting the sensations of admiration or horror. Agricultural 

 nations increase artificially the predominance of social plants, 

 and thus augment, in many parts of the temperate and north- 

 ern zones, the natural aspect of uniformity; and whilst their 

 labours tend to the extirpation of some wild plants, they 

 likewise lead to the cultivation of others which follow the 

 colonist in his most distant migration. The luxuriant zone of 

 the tropics offers the strongest resistance to these changes in 

 the natural distribution of vegetable forms. 



Observers who in short periods of time have passed over 

 vast tracts of land, and ascended lofty mountains, in which 

 climates were ranged, as it were, in strata one above another, 

 must have been early impressed by the regularity with which 

 vegetable forms are distributed. The results yielded by their 

 observations furnished the rough materials for a science, to 

 which no name had as yet been given. The same zones or 

 regions of vegetation which, in the sixteenth century, Cardinal 

 Bembo, when a youth,f described on the declivity of Etna, 

 were observed 011 Mount Ararat by Tournefort. He inge- 

 niously compared the Alpine flora with the flora of plains 

 situated in different latitudes, and was the first to observe the 

 influence exercised in mountainous regions, on the distribu- 

 tion of plants by the elevation of the ground above the level of 

 the sea, and by the distance from the poles in flat countries. 

 Menzel, in an inedited work on the flora of Japan, accidentally 

 made use of the term geography of plants ; and the same ex- 

 pression occurs in the fanciful but graceful work of Bernardin 

 de St. Pierre, Etudes de la Nature. A scientific treatment of 

 the subject began, however, only when the geography of 

 plants was intimately associated with the study of the distri- 



* On the physiognomy of plants, see Humboldt, Ansichten der 

 Nalur, bd. ii. s. 1-125. 



t sEtna Dialogue. Opuscula, Basil. 1556, pp. 53, 54. A very beau- 

 tiful geography of the plants of Mount Etna has recently been published 

 by Philippi. See Linnaa, 1832, s. 733. 



