236 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



terial gives to the study of nature, when regarded from higher 

 points of view, a peculiar charm, still too little recognized. 



But if the characteristic aspect of different portions of the earth's 

 surface depends conjointly on all external phenomena if the con- 

 tours of the mountains, the physiognomy of plants and animals, 

 the azure of the sky, the form of the clouds, and the transparency 

 of the atmosphere, all combine in forming that general impression 

 which is the result of the whole, yet it cannot be denied that the 

 vegetable covering with which the whole earth is adorned is the 

 principal element in the impression. Animal forms are deficient in 

 mass, and the individual power of motion which animals possess, as 

 well as often the smallness of their size, withdraw them from our 

 sight. The vegetable forms, on the contrary, produce a greater effect 

 by their magnitude and by their constant presence. The age of 

 trees is marked by their size, and the union of age with the mani- 

 festation of constantly renewed vigor is a charm peculiar to the 

 vegetable kingdom. The gigantic Dragon-tree of Orotava ( u ) (as 

 sacred in the eyes of the inhabitants of the Canaries as the olive- 

 tree in the Citadel of Athens, or the Elm of Ephesus), the diameter 

 of which I found, when I visited those Islands, to be more than 16 

 feet, had the same colossal size, when the French adventurers, the 

 Be'thencourts, conquered these gardens of the Hesperides in the 

 beginning of the fifteenth century; yet it still flourishes, as if in 

 perpetual youth, bearing flowers and fruit. A tropical forest of 

 Hymenseas and Caesalpiniese may perhaps present to us a monu- 

 ment of more than a thousand years' standing. 



If we embrace in one general view the different species of phaeno- 

 gamous plants at present contained in herbariums, the number of 

 which may now be estimated at considerably above 80,000, ( 13 ) we 

 shall recognize in this prodigious multitude certain leading forms to 

 which many others may be referred. In determining these leading 

 forms or types, on the individual beauty, the distribution, and the 

 grouping of which the physiognomy of the vegetation of a country 

 depends, we must not follow the march of systems of botany, in 

 which from other motives the parts chiefly regarded are the smaller 

 organs of propagation, the flowers and the fruit ; we must, on the 

 contrary, consider solely that which by its mass stamps a peculiar 



