xxii INTRODUCTION. 



step. With every altered condition and circumstance now plants start up. 

 The mountain Bide lias it- own races of vegetable inhabitants, and the 

 valleys have theirs ; the tribes of the sand, the granite, and the limestone 

 arc all different : and the sun does not Bhine upon two degrees on the surface 

 of this globe tin- regetation of which is identical: for every latitude has a 

 Flora of it- own. In Bhort, the forms of seas, lakes, and rivers, islands 

 and peninsula.-, hills, valleys, plains, and mountains, are not so infinitely 

 diversified as that of the vegetation which adorns them.* 



Botanists have gathered together these endless forms, have studied and 

 arranged them, and calculated their numbers, which amount to more than 

 92,000 species: a mighty host whose ranks are daily swelled by new 

 recruits. 



This va.-t assemblage has not been gathered together in a few years ; it 

 is coeval with man, and we cannot but feel that the study of the distinctions 

 between one plant and another commenced with the first day of the creation 

 of the human race. The name indeed of Botany is modern ; but its anti- 

 cpiitv date- from the appearance of our first parents. We may assume it as 

 a certain fact that the Vegetable Kingdom was the first to engage the atten- 

 tion of man, for it was more accessible, more easily turned to useful purposes, 

 and more directly in contact with him than the Animal. Plants must have 

 yielded man his earliest food, his first built habitation ; his utensils and his 

 weapons must alike have been derived from the same source. This could 

 not fail to produce experience, and especially the art of distinguishing one kind 

 of plant from another, if it were only as a means of recognising the useful and 

 the worthies- species, or of remembering those in which such qualities were 

 most predominant. This would involve from the very beginning the con- 

 trivance of names for plants, together with the collection of individuals into 

 species : and the mental process by which this was unconsciously effected 

 gradually ripened into the first rude classifications that we know of. By 

 placing together individuals identical in form and the uses they could be 

 applied to, species were distinguished ; and by applying a similar pro- 

 cess to the species themselves, groups analogous to what we now call 

 genera were obtained. The last step was to constitute classes, which were 

 recognised under the well-known names of "grass, and herbs yielding seed, 

 and fruit trees yielding fruit." 



It is in the tropica that the prodigious diversity of appearance among plants is most strikingly exem- 



I Iven as a frontispiece to this work, is copied from a plate in the 



Dr. Von Martius, who describes it thus: "The landscape is divided into two 



I the height of 70 01 so feet; it is Eschweilera angustifolia. It is 



overran with rop dit, or hang down in various festoons ; these ropes yield a milky 



white or yellowish Juice when wounded, and probably belong to the Dogbanes or Asclepiads : other 



twiner d with Bne, large, beautifully green haves, consist of species of Banisteria Smilai 



iptuously intertwined and entangled. A little above there is a tuft of the 



Lnthericom glaucnm, and from the summit of aU hangs down some unknown kind of 



Bromi Iwort <>n the left stands a slender Acai ia, whose bark is embraced bv some parasitical climber ; 



then .ones theCouratari legalis, a high tree, whose timber is used in house-building ■ it forms a stem 



60 or 7 ■ without I branch, and then spreads into a hemispherical head : owing to the slowness 



of its growth it is overrun with epiphyte*. In trout of the Acacia is a low tree with a close head and a 



Shining hark ; that Is a I leus atnen.ana. and Banisterias are shooting downwards from among its 



this lie the bones of some fallen giant of the forest, overspread with great tufts of 



ricum and Kpiphylliiin pbvllantbus. « 1 bv. >,,me Psychotria expands its large leaves and wide 



\ Heliconiaand a Phrynium start from the mud and marshy foreground ; a great patch of 



rum umbellatum flourishes on the rotten trunk, and just in front is a group of Agarics such as 



I Europe. The tall tree on the right of Eschweilera, with a smooth bark and 



ives, is an Inga; next it Is a small bush of Leandra scabra, behind which is a thicket of 



mm nutans, backed by the Briodendron leiantherum. The beautiful Palm to the 



i i Pohliana. The foreground on the right is occupied by Ficus longifolia con- 



imple foliage, and loaded with epiphytes of various kinds, especially with Anthericura 



gmucmi.. umbellatum, and longifolium. and C'aladium auritum. These and different' kinds of Hilberria 



lion of the rotten trunks in the neighbourhood. Near these is the white-barked 



ureen leav< 9 hoary » ith down on the under side." The cable-like climbers 



on the extreme right are not named by Dr. Von Martius. 



