130 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



sphere, in New Holland, palms, of which there are very few, 

 (six or seven species) only advance to 34 of latitude (see 

 Robert Brown's general remarks on the Botany of Terra 

 Australis, p. 45) ; and in New Zealand, where Sir Joseph 

 Banks first saw an Areca palm, they reach the 38th parallel. 

 In Africa, which, quite contrary to the ancient and still 

 widely prevailing belief, is poor in species of palms, 

 only one palm, the Hyphsene coriacea, advances to Port 

 Natal in 30 latitude. The continent of South America 

 presents almost the same limits in respect to latitude. On 

 the eastern side of the Andes, in the Pampas of Buenos 

 Ayres and in the Cis-Plata province, palms extend, according 

 to Auguste de St.-Hilaire, to 34 and 35 S. latitude. This 

 is also the latitude to which on the western side of the 

 Andes the Coco de Chile (our Jubsea spectabilis?), the only 

 Chilian palm, extends, according to Claude Gay, being as 

 far as the banks of the Rio Maule. (See also Darwin's 

 Journal, edition of 1845, p. 244 and 256). 



I will here introduce some detached remarks which I 

 wrote in March, 1801, on board the ship in which we 

 were sailing from the palmy shores of the mouth of the Eio 

 Sinu, west of Darien, to Cartagena de las Indias. 



" We have now, in the course of the two years which we 

 have spent in South America, seen 27 different species of 

 palms. How many must Commerson, Thunberg, Banks, 

 Solander, the two Forsters, Adanson, and Sonnerat, have 

 observed in their distant voyages ! Yet, at the present 

 moment, when I write these lines, our systems of botany 

 do not include more than from 14 to 18 systematically 



