462 X. GENERAL, REMARKS. 



tain floras, bearing some considerable generic or ordinal 

 resemblance to the floras of boreal and arctic lands, with 

 little identity among the species. Even on the Alps and 

 Pyrenees of Europe, as a traveller approximates towards 

 their snowy summits and gelid glaciers, he finds there 

 only a portion of the arctic or sub -polar flora ; and that 

 portion is intermingled among many other non- arctic 

 species, whose affinities are those of the more southern 

 latitudes where those mountains are situate. 



A remark in the writings of Tournefort has been copied 

 and re-copied a hundred times over by non-inquiring 

 book-makers, and in dull routine continues to be miscon- 

 strued or misapplied up to the current year. The fol- 

 lowing passages are transcribed from a recent work of 

 considerable merit, in exemplification of a false generality 

 given to Tournefort's idea, which is only sound while more 

 correctly applied and limited : — 



"Again, as indeed must be perceptible to every one 

 who has visited mountainous countries, vegetation alters 

 in its characters at difi^'erent elevations, and it has been 

 shown that these variations correspond to those which 

 are observed on the level plains in proceeding from the 

 south towards the north ; the increased severity of the 

 climate of the higher localities acting exactly in the same 

 way as the colder climate of the regions lying further 



from the equator." "In his Voyage to the 



Levant, Tournefort relates that he was struck with the 

 alterations in the characters of the vegetation as he 

 ascended Mount Ararat ; at the foot he passed through 

 the plants of Asia Minor ; half-ui^ he met with those of 

 France, and at the summit he recognized the members of 

 the Lapland flora. Linnaeus carried out this idea some- 

 what further, and the observations of all subsequent tra- 

 vellers have only served to confirm and extend it. Step 



