GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 63 



animals which flourish and thrive in countries re- 

 mote from each other, offer to the eye of the travel- 

 ler a series of pictures, which, even to an ignorant 

 and unreflecting spectator, is full of a peculiar 

 and fascinating interest, in consequence of the 

 novelty and strangeness of the successive scenes. 

 Those who describe the countries between the 

 tropics, speak with admiration of the luxuriant 

 profusion and rich variety of the vegetable pro- 

 ductions of those regions. Vegetable life seems 

 there far more vigorous and active, the circum- 

 stances under which it goes on, far more favour- 

 able than in our latitudes. Now if we conceive 

 an inhabitant of those regions, knowing, from the 

 circumstances of the earth's form and motion, the 

 difference of climates which must prevail upon it, 

 to guess, from what he saw about him, the con- 

 dition of other parts of the globe as to vegetable 

 wealth, is it not likely that he would suppose that 

 the extratropical climates must be almost devoid 

 of plants ? We know that the ancients, living in 

 the temperate zone, came to the conclusion that 

 both the torrid and the frigid zones must be 

 uninhabitable. In like manner the equatorial 

 reasoner would probably conceive that vegetation 

 must cease, or gradually die away, as he should 

 proceed to places further and further removed 

 from the genial influence of the sun. The mean 

 temperature of his year being about 80 degrees, 

 he would hardly suppose that any plants could 



