ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 341 



degree to which they flourish, and the increase in the number of 

 individuals in a species ; but the gigantic height attained by the 

 trunks of a few among the many other nearly allied species of the 

 same genus, depends not on soil or climate ; but, in the vegetable 

 as well as in the animal kingdom, on a specific organization and 

 inherent natural disposition. I will cite, as the greatest contrast to 

 the Araucaria imbricata of Chili, the Pinus Douglasii of the 

 Columbia Eiver, and the Sequoia gigantea of New California, which 

 is from 245 to 300 Eng. feet .in height, not a plant taken from 

 among a vegetation stunted by cold either of latitude or elevation 

 as is the case with the small Willow-tree, two inches in height 

 (Salix arctica) ; but a small phaonogamous plant belonging to the 

 fine climate of the southern tropic in the Brazilian province of 

 Goyaz. The moss-like Tristicha hypnoides, from the monocotyle- 

 donous family of the Podostemese, hardly reaches the height of 3 

 lines (^ths, or less than three-tenths of an English inch). "En 

 traversant le Rio Claro dans la Province de Goyaz," says an excel- 

 lent observer, Auguste de St.-Hilaire, "j'apercus sur une pierre une 

 plante dont la tige n'avoit pas plus de trois lignes de haut et que 

 je pris d'abord pour une mousse. C'e"toit cependant une plante 

 phanerogame, le Tristicha hypnoides, pourvue d'organes sexuels 

 comme nos chenes et les arbres gigantesques qui a Pentour elevaient 

 leur cimes majestueuses." (Auguste de St.-Hilaire, Morphologic 

 Vegetable, 1840, p. 98.) 



Besides the height of their stems, the length, breadth, and posi- 

 tion of the leaves and fruit, the form of the ramification aspiring or 

 horizontal, and spreading out like a canopy or umbrella the gra- 

 dations of color, from a fresh green or silvery gray to a blackish- 

 brown, all give to Coniferae a peculiar physiognomy and character. 

 The needles of Douglas's Pinus lambertiana from North-west 

 America are five French inches long; those of Pinus excelsa of 

 Wallich, on the southern^ declivity of the Himalaya, near Kat- 

 mandoo, seven French inches; and those of P. longifolia (Roxb.), 

 from the mountains of Kashmeer, above a French foot long. In 

 one and the same species the length of the leaves or needles varies 

 in the most striking manner, from the influence of soil, air, and 

 elevation above the level of the sea. In travelling in an east and west 



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