x57 ORY OF PLANTS: 5397 
§ 362, 
Alpine plants, or plants of very high mountains 
where these mountainous chains formerly cohered, 
but which since the various great changes in our 
elobe have taken place, is not now the case, are 
pretty nearly the same. At least many plants.may 
be found common to the different ranges of moun- 
tains, though each has again plants peculiar to itself. 
Nay, the more common mountain plants, or such as 
occur in the mountains of Europe and Asia, appear 
to follow the direction of the line of snow, as geo- 
eraphers call at, and are met with in Greenland, 
Spitzbergen, Lapland, Nova Zembla, North Siberia, 
and Kamtschatka in the open fields, whereas in tem- 
perate climates, they grow at the highest summits 
of mountains oa The mountainous regions of Si- 
beria, Lapland, } Norway, Scotland, Switeerland, the 
Pyrennees, Appenines, and Carpathian Alps have 
many plants im common with each other. The 
smaller mountains of Germany, of the Harz, Thur- 
ingia, Silesia, Bohemia, have many plants the same. 
One instance will suffice; the bitch, (Betula nana), 
occurs mostly in all of them, the inlibe of Siberia, 
the Apenines and Carpathian excepted. Does not 
this similarity of vegetation, ee winds, birds, 
and other circumstances may have contributed to 
the dissemination of these plants, prove that these 
mountains once cohered? ‘Tournefort found at the 
foot of Mount Ararat all the plants of Armenia ; 
somewhat higher up, those which are common to 
France ; ‘still Michie up, thos ose which grow in Swe- 
r 
den; 
