66 



nutritive plants, and of these indeed, he has scarcely more 

 knowledge than that which is possessed by his wild associ- 

 ates, the beasts of the forest. Nature to him is a blank — 

 All her endless varieties exist in vain. It is civilization 

 alone which opens the stores and discloses the mysteries of 

 creatiou, and enables man to appropriate to himself whatev- 

 er is necessary, useful and ornamental. Till the discovery 

 of America, therefore, by civilized Europe, the advantages 

 of our country for the study of Natural history in general, 

 and of Botany in particular, could not be appreciated. These 

 advantages, I have affirmed, are peculiar and important— 

 They are so, because in a new country all vegetation, being 

 in its original state, the Botanist is not perplexed in his in- 

 vestigations and discoveries, by those changes in the quali- 

 ties and the appearance of plants, which the culture and 

 the innovations of art always occasion. Add to this, the im- 

 portant circumstance, that the greater portion of our coun- 

 try is placed in that happy temperature of climate, where 

 vegetation is neither wholly checked by the severity of 

 northern blasts, nor its sources dried up by the too ardent 

 rays of the sun. It is true indeed that hybridous productions 

 are every where to be found,* and that a doubt may be sug- 

 gested whether all the s/iecies filantariun are not the efFec-t 

 of changes produced by time ; and that the genera alone 

 were the immediate productions of the Creator. Be this 

 as it may, it is still certain, that a newly discovered country 

 affords far less varieties of this kind, than are found in re- 

 gions where the improvements of cultivation have been 

 introduced. 



The moisture of the ground and the state of the atmos- 

 phere is not so much varied in America by a difference in 

 latitude as in the countries of the old world. From this 

 cause probably we witness that general and remarkable 

 abundance of herbs, shrubs and trees which distinguish the 

 different parts of this continent. There is certainly a lux- 



* See Wildenow's Principles of Botany— and also a Dissertation on 

 the Sexes cf Plants bv Linnsus, 



