INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 33 



discriminate varieties, as by the botanist to distinguish spe- 

 cies. The student should be on his guard to avoid being led 

 astray by dominant ideas on this subject, and fancying that 

 the aspect of a species to which he is most accustomed is the 

 typical one of its race. Let him examine well, in their native 

 forests, the Pines (those most variable of plants). Let him 

 compare Pinus longifolia from a deep dell in the humid at- 

 mosphere of Kumaon, Nipal, or Sikkim, with the same tree 

 growing on a sandstone rock in the arid climate of the Pan- 

 jab. Let him contrast the Larch of Switzerland or the Tyrol, 

 with that cultivated in our English plantations, or the common 

 Scotch fir of the sandy plains of North Germany, with the 

 same tree on the higher Alps ; or attempt to give limits to the 

 variations of the Yew-tree everywhere, whether wild or culti- 

 vated. Our Junipers, Willows, Birches, and Roses, will afford 

 in abundance similar instances of great mutability of form, 

 with no modification of essential characters ; and the gardener 

 makes of one and the same species, or even variety, a standard 

 or espalier, a tree or shrub, an erect or decumbent plant. 

 Most of these instances, and many others, must be fami- 

 liar to botanists ; yet we believe we shall meet with few sup- 

 porters in the opinion we have formed, and to which direct 

 observation has led us, that habit alone, when unaccompanied 

 by characters, in the organs of reproduction especially, is of 

 no specific weight whatever. 



As we write, a hundred instances of protean habit in In- 

 dian plants crowd upon our memory. The cqmmon Yew, which 

 is indigenous throughout the whole length of the Himalaya 

 and in the Khasia mountains, wherever it grows in the deep 

 forests is a tall tree, with naked trunk, rivalling in dimen- 

 sions the giant pines and oaks with which it is surrounded ; 

 on the skirts of the same forests it is a lax, almost prostrate 

 bush, while on open slopes it becomes a stout, dense, tabular- 

 branched tree. The Rose, Spiraea, and Berberry of the West- 

 ern Plimalaya are truly protean in character, being abundant 

 in all situations, — whether forming underwood in forest, or 



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