CORA AND KRONOS. 149 



blance of appearance and physiognomy in the vegetation of 

 the most distant countries. This phenomenon is one of the 

 most curious in the history of organic forms. I say the his- 

 tory ; for in vain would reason, forbid man to form hypotheses 

 on the origin of things : he is not the less tormented with 

 these insoluble problems of the distribution of beings." 



15. Insoluble yes, assuredly, poor little beaten phantasms 

 of palpitating clay that we are and who asked us to solve it ? 

 Even this Humboldt, quiet-hearted and modest watcher of 

 the ways of Heaven, in the real make of him, came at last to 

 be so far puffed up by his vain science in declining years that 

 he must needs write a Kosmos of things in the Universe, for- 

 sooth, as if he knew all about them ! when he was not able 

 meanwhile, (and does not seem even to have desired the 

 ability,) to put the slightest Kosmos into his own ' Personal 

 Narrative ' ; but leaves one to gather what one wants out of 

 its wild growth ; or rather, to wash or winnow what may be 

 useful out of its debris, without any vestige either of reference 

 or index ; and I must look for these fragmentary sketches of 

 heath and grass through chapter after chapter about the races 

 of the Indian and religion of the Spaniard, these also of 

 great intrinsic value, but made useless to the general reader 

 by interspersed experiment on the drifts of the wind and the 

 depths of the sea. 



16. But one more fragment out of a note (vol. iii., p. 494) 

 I must give, with reference to an order of the Rhododendrons 

 as yet wholly unknown to me. 



" The name of vine tree, ' uvas camaronas ' (Shrimp grapes ?) 

 is given in the Andes to plants of the genus Thibaudia on ac- 

 count of their large succulent fruit. Thus the ancient botanists 

 give the name of Bear's vine, ' Uva Ursi,' and vine of Mount 

 Ida, 'Vitis Idea,' to an Arbutus and Myrtillus which belong, 

 like the Thibaudise, to the family of the Ericinese." 



Now, though I have one entire bookcase and half of an- 

 other, and a large cabinet besides, or about fifteen feet square 

 of books on botany beside me here, and a quantity more at 

 Oxford, I have no means whatever, in all the heap, of finding 

 out what a Thibaudia is like. Loudon's Cyclopsedia, the only 



