12 COSMOS. 



tains of Cundinaraarca, of Quito, and of Peru, furrowed by deep 

 ravines, man is enabled to contemplate alike all the families of 

 plants, and all the stars of the firmament. There, at a single 

 glance, the eye surveys majestic palms, humid forests of 

 bambusa, and the varied species of musacese, while above 

 these forms of tropical vegetation appear oaks, medlars, the 

 sweetbrier, and umbelliferous plants, as in our European 

 homes. There, as the traveller turns his eyes to the vault of 

 heaven, a single glance embraces the constellation of the 

 Southern Cross, the Magellanic clouds, and the guiding stars 

 of the constellation of the Bear, as they circle round the 

 arctic pole. There the depths of the earth and the vaults of 

 heaven display all the richness of their forms and the variety 

 of their phenomena. There the different climates are ranged 

 the one above the other, stage by stage, like the vegetable 

 zones, whose succession they limit ; and there the observer 

 may readily trace the laws that regulate the diminution of 

 heat, as they stand indelibly inscribed on the rocky walls and 

 abrupt declivities of the Cordilleras. 



Not to weary the reader with the details of the phenomena 

 which I long since endeavoured graphically to represent,* I 



soons across the plains of India to the skirts of the Himalaya, which 

 arrest its course, and hinder it from diverging to the Thibetian districts of 

 JLadak and Lassa. Carl von HUgel estimates the elevation of the valley of 

 Kashmir above the level of the sea at 5818 feet, and bases his observation 

 on the determination of the boiling point of water, (see theil 11, s. 155, 

 and Journal of Geog. Soc., vol. vi. p. 215). In this valley, where the 

 atmosphere is scarcely ever agitated by storms, and in 34 7' lat., snow is 

 found, several feet in thickness, from December to March. 



* See, generally, my Essai sur la Geographic des Planter, et le 

 Tableau physique des Regions Equinoxiales, 1807, pp. 80-88. On the 

 diurnal and nocturnal variations of temperature, see Plate 9 of my Atlas 

 G6ogr. et Phys. du Nouveau Continent; and the Tables in my work, 

 entitled De distributione geographica Plantarum secundum coeli tem- 

 periem et altitudinem montium, 1817, pp. 90-116; the meteorological 

 portion of my Asie Centrale, torn, iii., pp. 212, 224 ; and, finally, the more 

 recent and far more exact exposition of the variations of temperature 

 experienced in correspondence with the increase of altitude on the chain 

 of the Andes, given in Boussingault's Memoir, Sur la prqfondeur a la- 

 quelle on trouve, sous les Tropiques, la couche de Temperature Invariable. 

 (Ann. de Chimie et de Physique, 1833, t. liii., pp. 225-247.) This treatise 

 contains the elevations of 128 points, included between the level of the 

 sea and the declivity of the Antisana (17,900 feet), as well as the mean 

 temperature of the atmosphere, which varies with the height between 81* 

 and 35 F. 



