80 
KEVIEW. 
Island has been examined witli tolerable completeness from the 
Toyaije of Banks and Solander to Lesson, and the Brothers Cun- 
ningham and Colenso ; and yet in more than seventy years we 
have only become acquainted with less than 700 phcenogamous 
species. (Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, 1843, vol. i., 
p. 419.) The paucity of vegetable corresponds to the paucity of 
animal species. Joseph Hooker, in his Flora Antartica, p. 73-75, 
remarks that ' the botany of the densely- wooded regions of the 
Southern Islands of the New Zealand gi'oup, and of Fuegia, is 
much more meagre, not only than that of similarly clothed 
regions of Europe, but of islands many degrees nearer to the 
Northern Pole than these are to the Southern one. Iceland, for 
instance, which is from 8 to 10 degrees farther from the equator 
than the Auckland and the Campbell Islands, contains certainly 
five times as many flowering plants. In the Antartic Flora, 
under the influence of a cool and moist, but singularly equable 
climate, great imiformity, arising from paucity of species, is 
associated with great luxuriance of vegetation. This sti-iking 
uniformity prevails both at diiferent levels, (the species found 
on the plains appearing also on the slopes of the mountains,) 
and over vast extents of country, from the south of Chili to 
Patagonia, and even to Tierra del Fuego, or from lat. 45 to 56 
deg. Compare, on the other hand, in the northern temperate 
region, the Flora of the south of France, in the latitude of the 
Chonos Archipelago on the coast of Chili, with the Flora of 
Argyleshire in Scotland in the latitude of Cape Horn, and bow 
great a difference of species is foimd ; wliile in the Southern 
Hemisphere the same types of vegetation pass through many 
degrees of latitude. Lastly, on Walden Island, in lat. 80^ deg. 
N., or not ten degi-ees from the North Pole of the earth, ten 
species of flowering plants have been collected, while in the 
southernmost islet of the South Sbetlands, though only in lat. 
63 deg. S.. only a solitary gi'ass was found.' These considera- 
tions on the distribution of plants confirm the belief that the 
great mass of still unobserved, uncollected, and undescribed 
flowering plants must he sought for in tropical coimtries, and in 
the latitudes from 12 to 15 deg. distant from the tropics." 
Among tlie other extensive notes to this essay, all 
very full of information on interesting points, we may 
especiallypoint to those on the "fertilisation of flowers," 
the " colossal size and great age of trees," and the spe- 
cial notes devoted to each of the typical forms of vege- 
tation, especially those of the Palms and the Conifera?. 
Finally, there is a supplementary note on the physiog- 
nomical classification of plants, from which we make 
our final exh'act, con"\anced that our readers will desire 
to see more of the book. 
"As, therefore, a ' physiognomic classification,' or a division 
into groups from external aspect or * faeies,' does not admit of 
being applied to the whole vegetable kingdom, so also, in such a 
classification, the gi'ounds on which the division is made are 
quite different from those on which our systems of natural 
families and of plants (including the whole of the vegetable 
kingdom) have been so happily established. Physiognomic 
classification grounds her divisions and the choice of her types 
on whatever possesses ' mass,' — such as shape, position, and ar- 
rangement of leaves, their size, and the character and surfaces 
(shining or dull) of the parenchyma,— therefore, on all that are 
called more especially the ' organs of vegetation,' i. c. those on 
which the preservation,— the nourishment and development, — 
of the individual depend ; while systematic botany, on the other 
hand, grounds the arrangement of natural families on the con- 
sideration of the organs of propagation,— those on which the 
continuation or preservation of the species depends. (Kunth, 
Lehrbuch der Botanik, 1847, Th. i. S. 511 ; Schleiden, diePflanze 
und ihr Leben, 1848, S. 100.) It was already taught in the 
school of Aristotle (Probl. 20, 7), that the production of seed is 
the ultimate object of the existence and life of the plant. Since 
Caspar Fried. Wolf (Thcoria Gonerationis, $ 5-9), and since our 
great (German) poet, the process of development in the organs 
of fructification has become the morphological foundation of all 
Bystematic botany. 
" That study, and the study of the physiognomy of plants, I 
here repeat, proceed from two different points of view : the first 
from agreement in the inflorescence or in the delicate organs of 
reproduction; the second from the form of the parts which 
constitute the axes {i. e. the stems and branches), and the shape 
of the leaves, dependent principally on the distribution of the 
vascular fascicles. As, then, the axes and appendicular organs 
predominate by their volume and mass, they determine and 
strengthen the impression wliich we receive ; they indi\-idualise 
the physiognomic character of the vegetable form and that of 
the landscape, or of the region in which any of the more 
stronglj'-marked and distinguished types severally occur. The 
law is here given by agreement and aifinity in the marks taken 
from the vegetative, i. e. the nutritive organs. In all European 
colonies, the inhabitants have taken occasion, from resemblances 
of physiognomy (of 'habitus,' 'faeies,') to bestow the names of 
European forms upon tropical plants or trees bearing very dif- 
ferent flowers and fruits from those from which the names were 
originally taken. Everywhere, in both hemispheres, northern 
settlers have thought they found alders, poplars, apple and 
olive trees. They have been misled in most cases by the form 
of the leaves and the direction of the branches. The illusion 
has been favoured by the cherished remembrance of the trees 
and plants of home, and thus European names have been handed 
down from generation to generation ; and in the slave colonies 
there have been added to them denominations derived from 
negro languages. 
" The contrast so often presented between a striking agree- 
ment of physiognomy and the greatest diversity in the inflor- 
escence and fructification, — between the external aspect as 
determined by the appendicular or leaf-system, and the repro- 
ductive organs on which the groups of the natural systems of 
botany are founded, — is a remarkable and surprising pheno- 
menon. We should have been inclined beforehand to imagine 
that the shape of what are exclusively termed the vegetative 
organs, for example, the leaves, would have been less indepen- 
dent of the structm*e of the organs of reproduction; but in 
reality such a dependence only shows itself in a small number of 
families,— in Ferns, Grasses, and Cyperaceas, Palms, Coniferas, 
UmbelliferEG, and Aroidete. In Leguminoste the agreement in 
physiognomic character is scarcely to be recognised until we 
divide them into the several gi'oups (Papilionacece, Ccesalpiniete, 
and MimoscEe). I may name, of types which, when compared 
with each other, show considerable accordance in physiognomy 
with great difference in the structure of the flowers and fruit, 
Palms and Cycadece, the latter being more nearly allied to 
Conifera? ; Cuscuta, one of the Convolvulacae, and the leafless 
Cassytha, a parasitical Laurinece ; Equisetum, (belonging to the 
gi-eat division of Ci'yptogamia,) and Ephedra, closely allied to 
ConifersB. On the other hand, our common gooseberries and 
currants (Ribcs) are so closely allied by their inflorescence to 
the Cactus, i. e. to the family of Opuntiaceae, that it is only quite 
recently that they have been separated from it ! One and the 
same family (that of Asphodelece) comprises the gigantic Dra- 
caena Draco, the common asparagus, and the Aletris with its 
coloured flowers. Not only do simple and compoxmd leaves 
often belong to the same family, but they even occur in the 
same genus. We found in the high plains of Peru and New 
Granada, among twelve new species of Weinmannia, five with 
'foliis simplicibus,' and the rest with pinnate leaves. The 
genus Ai'alia shows still greater independence in the form 
of the leaves : ' foha simplicia, Integra, vel lobata, digitata et 
pinnata.' (Compare Kunth, Synopsis Plantarum quas in iti- 
nere collegerunt, Al. de Hmnboldt et Aim. Bonpland, T. iii. 
p. 87 andSGO). 
" Pinnated leaves appear to me to belong chiefly to families 
which are in the highest grade of organic development, namely, 
the Polj'pctalte ; and among these, in the Perigynic class, to the 
Leguminosse, Bosaceie, TerebinthaceiE, and Juglandece ; and in 
the Hypogynic, to the AurantiaceoB, CedrelaccEe, and Sapin- 
daceai. The beautiful doubly-pinnated leaves which form one 
of the principal ornaments of the torrid zone, are most frequent 
among the Legurainosas, in Mimosea;, also in some CcesalpinieiE, 
Coulterias, and Gleditschias ; never, as Kunth remarks, in Pa- 
pUionacea?. ' Folia pinnata' and * folia composita' are never 
found in Gentianese, Rubiacete, and Myi'tacece. In the morpho- 
logical development presented by the abundance and variety of 
form in the appendicular organs of Dicotyledones, we can at 
present discern only a small number of general laws.' 
