ON ORGANIZATION. 531 



the air is perfumed with the odours of myrrh, 

 balm, frankincense, sugar-cane, coffee, tea, 

 mace, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper, with 

 innumerable other plants that abound with the 

 most highly elaborated aromatics and precious 

 drugs where the fig-tree, orange, lemon, date, 

 and a thousand varieties of palms, are loaded 

 with an exuberance of delicious fruits. But as 

 we advance to the middle latitudes, where the 

 mean temperature is from 20 to 30 lower, we 

 find that the more exquisitely organized vege- 

 tation of the torrid zone is, for the most part, re- 

 placed by totally different orders and genera, 

 which diminish in number, variety, and mag- 

 nitude, on to the polar circles ; where only fungi, 

 lichens, algae, the humbler grasses, and a few 

 other plants of the most simple structure are 

 generated during their short summer. 



It is also in the tropical regions, that animals 

 have been found in the greatest number, and 

 where they arrive at the greatest magnitude ; from 

 the ostrich, cassowary, and condor of Africa and 

 South America among birds, to the elephant, 

 rhinoceros, hippopotamus, giraffe, and camel, 

 among mammalia, or the gigantic species of the 

 feline tribe, as the lion, tiger, leopard, &c. But 

 it is more especially among cold blooded animals, 

 that the magnitude of the same species is found 

 so greatly to exceed that of such as inhabit the 

 higher latitudes. The developement of the cro- 



