238 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



limits. But these limits, which have been established by observa- 

 tion as far as it has yet gone, may be corrected by the discovery of 

 species with which we are still unacquainted. 



In land animals, the higher temperatures of the low latitudes ap- 

 pear to have favored organic development. The small and slender 

 form of our lizards is exchanged in the south for the gigantic, heavy, 

 and cuirassed bodies of crocodiles. In the formidable tiger, lion, 

 and jaguar, we see repeated, on a larger scale, the form of the com- 

 mon cat, one of the smallest of our domestic animals. If we pene- 

 trate into the interior of the earth, and search the cemeteries in 

 which the plants and animals of the ancient world lie entombed, the 

 fossil remains which we discover not only announce a distribution 

 inconsistent with our present climates they also disclose to us gi- 

 gantic forms that contrast no less with those which now surround us, 

 than does the simple heroism of the Greeks with the character of 

 human greatness in modern times. Has the temperature of our 

 planet undergone considerable changes possibly of periodical re- 

 currence? If the proportion between land and sea, and even the 

 height of the aerial ocean and its pressure, ( 14 ) have not always been 

 the same, the physiognomy of nature, arid the dimensions and forms 

 of organized beings, must also have been subjected to various alter- 

 ations. Huge Pachydermata, Mastodons, Owen's Mylodon robustus, 

 and the Colossochelys, a land-tortoise above six feet high, have ex- 

 isted, and in the vegetable kingdom there have been forests composed 

 of gigantic Lepidodendra, cactus-like Stigmarias, and numerous kinds 

 of Cycadese. Unable to depict fully according to its present features 

 the physiognomy of our planet in this its later age, I will only ven- 

 ture to attempt to indicate the characters which principally distin- 

 guish those vegetable groups which appear to me to be most strongly 

 marked by physiognomic differences. However favored by the rich- 

 ness and flexibility of our native language, it is still an arduous and 

 hazardous undertaking when we attempt to trace in words that which 

 belongs rather to the imitative art of the painter. I feel also the 

 necessity of avoiding as much as possible the wearisome impression 

 almost inseparable from all lengthened enumerations. 

 | We will begin with palms, ( M ) the loftiest and noblest of all ve- 

 getable forms, that to which the prize of beauty has been assigned 



