16 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



feel himself differently affected in the dark shade of the 

 beech, on hills crowned with scattered fir-trees, or on the 

 turfy pasture, where the wind rustles in the trembling foliage 

 of the birch ? These trees of our native land have often 

 suggested or recalled to our minds images and thoughts, 

 either of a melancholy, of a grave and elevating, or of a 

 cheerful character. The influence of the physical oh the 

 moral world, that reciprocal and mysterious action and 

 reaction of the material and the immaterial, gives to the 

 study of nature, when regarded from higher points of view, 

 a peculiar charm, still too little recognised. 



But if the characteristic aspect of different portions of 

 the earth's surface depends conjointly on all external pheno- 

 mena, if the contours of the mountains, the physiognomy 

 of plants and animals, the azure of the sky, the form of the 

 clouds, and the transparency of the atmosphere, all combine 

 in forming that general impression which is the result of the 

 whole, yet it cannot be denied that the vegetable covering 

 with which the whole earth is adorned is the principal ele- 

 ment in the impression. Animal forms are deficient in 

 mass, and the individual power of motion which animals 

 possess, as well as often the smallness of their size, with- 

 draw them from our sight. The vegetable forms, on the 

 contrary, produce a greater effect by their magnitude and by 

 their constant presence. The age of trees is marked by 

 their size, and the union ol age with the manifestation of 

 constantly renewed vigour is a charm peculiar to the vege- 

 table kingdom. The gigantic Dragon-tree of Orotava, ( 12 ) 

 (as sacred in the eyes of the inhabitants of the Canaries as 



