PHYSIOGNOMY OP PLANTS. 237 



character on the total impression produced, or on the aspect of the 

 country. Among the leading forms of vegetation to which I allude, 

 there are, indeed, some which coincide with families belonging to 

 the "natural systems" of botanists. Such are the forms of Bananas, 

 Palms, Casuarineae, and Coniferse. But the botanic systematist 

 divides many groups which the physiognomist is obliged to unite. 

 When plants or trees present themselves in masses, the outlines and 

 distribution of the leaves and the form of the stems and of the 

 branches are blended together. The painter (and here the artist's 

 delicate tact and appreciation of nature are demanded) can distin- 

 guish in the middle distance and background of a landscape groves 

 of palms or pines from beech woods, but he cannot distinguish the 

 latter from woods consisting of other deciduous forest trees. 



Above sixteen different forms of vegetation are principally con- 

 cerned in determining the aspect or physiognomy of Nature. I men- 

 tion only those which I have observed in the course of my travels both 

 in the New and Old Continents, where during many years I have at- 

 tentively examined the vegetation of the regions comprised between 

 the 60th degree of north and the 12th degree of south latitude. 

 The number of these forms will no doubt be considerably augmented 

 when travellers shall have penetrated farther into the interior of 

 Continents, and discovered new genera of plants. In the south- 

 eastern part of Asia, the interior of Africa and of New Holland, 

 and in South America from the river of the Amazons to the province 

 of Chiquitos, the vegetation is still entirely unknown to us. How 

 if at some future time a country should be discovered in which 

 ligneous fungi, Cenomyce rangiferina, or mosses, should form tall 

 tress? The Neckera dendroides, a G-erman species of moss, is in 

 fact arborescent; and bamboos (which are arborescent grasses) and 

 the tree ferns of the tropics, which are often higher than our lime- 

 trees, and alders, now present to the European a sight as surprising 

 as would be that of a forest of tree mosses to its discoverer. The 

 absolute size and the degree of development attained by organic 

 forms of the same family (whether plants or animals), depend on 

 laws which are still unknown to us. In each of the great divisions 

 of the animal kingdom, insects, Crustacea, reptiles, birds, fishes, or 

 mammalia, the size of the body oscillates between certain extreme 



