846 CONSIDERATIONS ON THE GEOGRAPHY 



determined by their general aspect and magnitude, and the 

 form and colour of their leaves and flowers. ( 428 ) The 

 animal creation, from its smaller mass, and from its mobility, 

 is far less influential in this respect, notwithstanding its 

 variety and interest, and its greater aptitude to excite in us 

 feelings either of sympathy or of aversion. Agricultural 

 nations enlarge artificially the domain of social plants, and 

 thus give to extensive districts in the temperate zone a cha- 

 racter of greater uniformity than would belong to them in a 

 state of nature ; cultivation extirpates, and causes gradually 

 to disappear, many species of wild plants, whilst others, 

 without being purposely conveyed, follow man in his most 

 distant migrations. The luxuriance of nature in the tropics 

 offers a more powerful resistance to the changes which 

 human efforts thus have a tendency to introduce in the aspect 

 of creation. 



Observers, who in short intervals of time traversed ex- 

 tensive regions, and ascended lofty mountains in which 

 different climates are found stage above stage in close 

 proximity, must have been early impressed with the character 

 of regularity in the distribution of vegetable forms : those 

 who recorded their observations were unconsciously collect, 

 ing the raw materials of a science of which the name had not 

 yet been spoken. The same zones or regions of vegetation 

 which, in the sixteenth century, Cardinal Bembo, when a 

 youth, observed and described on the acclivities of Etna, ( 429 ) 

 were found on those of Ararat by Tournefort, who compared 

 the alpine flora with the flora of the plains in different 

 latitudes, and was the first to re?.rk that the distribution 

 of vegetation is similarly mHuenced, Ly the elevation of the 



