PART i. INTRODUCTION TO THE INQUIRY. 7 



even then; for some of the largest ships of the once 

 dread Spanish Armada were either built, or internally 

 decorated, with the dark brown wood of the " giant 

 Tils " and " tall Vinhaticos," which the Spaniards, at that 

 time in possession of Madeira, procured from thence. 



How different though is not all, or even any approach 

 to, this style of dense forest vegetation, from the far- 

 between and solitary little stunted bushes of the African 

 desert, lying eastward on the very same parallel of lati- 

 tude; or from the isolated candelabra-like euphorbias, 

 which perch on the rocks forming the eastern and 

 southern slopes of the Canarian Islands five degrees to 

 the south ; or the thirsty look of the coasts of Western 

 Portugal the same distance to the north. 



Plants then had evidently found out, and profited by, 

 what was peculiar in Madeiran climate long before man. 

 But he having arrived on the scene at last, it is now his 

 duty to ascertain, if indeed he has not done so yet, how 

 much Madeira's difference from meteorological rule may 

 be, as measured in instrumental numbers of definite 

 elemental bearing. And it is something in that line, 

 though I am sorry to say only approximative, which I 

 would now beg leave to set before the Royal Society, 

 Edinburgh. 



being no typographical error, by the following lines as Englished by T. M. 



Hughes : 



" Ere grew that fire extinct, seven annual rounds 



Made the Great Planet, four and eighty were 

 The courses of the lustrous lamp of night." 



