COMMERCE. 



83 



the tender seeds which were put into the ground, did not ger- 

 minate, but were frozen. Accordingly, the indigenous shrubs 

 of America, instead of extending their roots perpendicularly, 

 spread them over the horizontal surface, thus avoiding, as it 

 were instindtively, the internal frost which is destru6live to 

 them. 



This degree of cold was equally sensible in the impressions 

 of the air, since, on a comparison of the most exa6l experi- 

 ments, a difference of twenty degrees may be estabUshed be- 

 tween the climate of the old world and that of the new, the 

 heat being as sensible in America at forty degrees of the equa- 

 tor, as it is at sixty in Europe. 



This disposition of the atmosphere must necessarily have had 

 an influence on the productions and animals of the new world. 

 Between its tropics there did not exist any of the large quadru- 

 peds ; and naturalists, adverting to this circumstance, have 

 suspe6led that the seeds could not develop themselves in a cli- 

 mate so unfavourable to the principal organizations of the ani- 

 mal kingdom : — a conje6ture which derives support from the 

 sensible degeneration suffered by all the animals imported from 

 Europe, insomuch that, at the commencement, serious ap- 

 prehensions were entertained that their races would be gradu- 

 ally extinguished*. 



* This observation is drawn from Bertrand's Natural and Political History of 

 Pennsylvania, but does not apply to the present circumstances of South America, in 

 many of the cultivated parts of which the breeds of the domestic animals imported 

 from Europe, are said rather to have improved, than to have degenerated. With a 

 y\ev/ to the illustration of tliis point, in Plate IV. the overseer of a royal Peruvian 

 mine is introduced on horseback, as represented in the descriptive painting of an In- 

 dian festival. 



M 2 The 



