88 ON VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. 



We may indeed admit that Europe, in its more 

 barbarous eras, presented to the stranger, thick 

 and extensive forests of natural growth, though 

 by the progress of civilization, we see compara- 

 tively but little of them at the present day; and 

 that our fields and our gardens, while they confer 

 rural beauty on our scenery and habitations, re- 

 ward the labourer's toil with plenteous returns in 

 situations, where, from the urikindness of the soil 

 and climate, the coarser vegetation only once 

 held a place. But these facts display upon a 

 very limited scale only, the extent of what is to 

 be understood by the vegetable kingdom. It is 

 in latitudes approaching the equator, and in the 

 southern continent of America, where the climate 

 is favourable, and where nature has been the least 

 disturbed in her operations, that we find vegeta- 

 tion in its fullest luxuriance, variety and grandeur. 

 Where the European herbaceous plant becomes 

 a shrub of no trifling dimensions ; the shrub, a 

 tree ; and the tree, a noble column of massy cir- 

 cumference, and of broad umbrageous foliage, of 

 which, in our less congenial climates we have no 

 example ; nor without experience can we form 

 any thing like an adequate idea. Where hills rise 

 upon hills in amphitheatrical order, covered to 

 their very summits, and closely invested with ve- 

 getation upon the grandest scale and unbounded 

 variety; and where a perpetual renovation and 

 succession preserve an uniform mass of foliage 

 throughout the whole year. 



