314 PHYSIOGNOMY OP PLANTS. 



ant both at Nice and in Sardinia, and yet is not found in the Island 

 of Corsica, which lies between those localities. In the New Con- 

 tinent, the Chamserops palmetto, which is sometimes above 40 

 English feet high, only advances as far north as 34 latitude, a 

 difference sufficiently explained by the inflexions of the isothermal 

 lines. In the Southern Hemisphere, in New Holland, palms, of 

 which there are very few (six or seven species), only advance to 34 

 of latitude (see Robert Brown's general remarks on the Botany of 

 Terra Australis, p. 45); and in New Zealand, where Sir Joseph 

 Banks first saw an Areca palm, they reach the 38th parallel. In 

 Africa, which, quite contrary to the ancient and still widely prevail- 

 ing belief, is poor in species of palms, only one palm, the Hyphsene 

 coriacea, advances to Port Natal in 30 latitude. The Continent 

 of South America presents almost the same limits in respect to 

 latitude. On the eastern side of the Andes, in the Pampas of 

 Buenos Ayres and in the Cis-Plata province, palms extend, according 

 to Auguste de St.-Hilaire, to 34 and 35 S. latitude. This is also 

 the latitude to which, on the western side of the Andes, the Coco 

 de Chile (our Jubsea spectabilis ?), the only Chilian palm, extends, 

 according to Claude Gay, being as far as the banks of the Rio 

 Maule. (See also Darwin's Journal, edition of 1845, pp. 244 and 

 256.) 



I will here introduce some detached remarks which I wrote in 

 March, 1801, on board the ship in which we were sailing from the 

 palmy shores of the mouth of the Rio Sinu, west of Darien, to 

 Cartagena de las Indias. 



"We have now, in the course of the two years which we have 

 spent in South America, seen 27 different species of palms. How 

 many must Commerson, Thunberg, Banks, Solander, the two For- 

 sters, Adanson, and Sonnerat have observed in their distant voyages ! 

 Yet, at the present moment, when I write these lines, our systems 

 of botany do not include more than from 14 to 18 systematically 

 described species. In truth, the difficulty of procuring the flowers 

 of palms is greater than can readily be imagined. We have felt it 

 so much the more from having especially directed our attention to 

 Palms, Grasses, Cyperacese, Juncacese, Cryptogamous Plants, and 

 such other objects as have been least studied hitherto. Most species 



