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 GEOLOGICAL FORMATIONS, 105 



* It is sought in vain over all the clay and sand formations 

 of the northern German plains, till, in the extreme north, 

 it again shows itself in Rugen, where the chalk rocks of 

 Arkend and Stubbenkammer lift their heads. 



'Again, on the western coast of France, there grow various 

 insignificant-looking shore plants, species of the Salsola 

 and Salicornia, which the inhabitants use to obtain soda 

 from the ashes. When we travel from thence toward the 

 east, we everywhere miss these little plants, even when 

 searching most carefully, and merely one or other of them 

 makes its appearance in places where the soil is moistened 

 by some salt spring. At last we arrive at the great steppes 

 of the south-east of Russia, which in summer are covered 

 with a thick crust of salt, and here these plants are found 

 growing in the same abundance and luxuriance as in the 

 west of France. 



' On the northern coast of Germany the little pale 

 maiden pink grows upon the arid sand downs, and is 

 universally distributed over the sandy plains of northern 

 Germany ; but these are succeeded by the granite, clay, 

 slate, and gypsum of the Hartz, the porphyry, and the 

 musselkalk of Turingia, and our little pink is not met with 

 again till we arrive on the keuper sand plains, on the 

 further side of the Maine, surrounding the venerable city 

 of Nuremberg. It extends further south through the 

 Palatinate, till the musselkalk of the Swabian Alps 

 again sets a limit to it, but it leaps over these and the 

 whole Alpine region, and at last appears again on the sandy 

 soils of Northern Italy. How is it these plants everywhere 

 disdain the richest soils in their range of geographical 

 distribution, and are conformed to perfectly determinate 

 geognostic formations? Must not the lime, the salt, the 

 sand, or rather the Silex, have a most distinct influence 

 in the matter? 



' In regard to soil science has gone astray in the most 

 varied and opposite directions. So late as the commence- 

 ment of the present century there were men who asserted 

 that plants could themselves form all their organic and 



