14 NATURAL CONDITIONS OP PLANTS. 
of good flavour. In our own country we often 
witness the effects produced by continuous heat 
in long summers. The rest thus obtained causes 
many plants to flower on the recurrence of au- 
tumnal rains, which would not otherwise have 
flowered until the ensuing spring — as the la- 
burnum and many others. 
To suit all the varied conditions to which I 
have thus briefly alluded, and under which plants 
have been found to exist, they have been formed 
of different structures and constitutions, to fit 
them for the stations they severally hold in 
creation, so that almost every different region of 
the globe is characterized by peculiar forms of 
vegetation, dependent upon climatal differences ; 
and thus a practised botanical eye can, with 
certainty, in almost all cases, predict the capa- 
bilities of any previously unknown country, by 
an inspection of the plants which it produces. It 
were much to be wished that those upon whom 
the welfare of thousands of their starving emi- 
grant countrymen depends, possessed a little 
more of this most useful knowledge. 
But in order to give a clearer idea of the close 
connexion existing between vegetation and climate, 
let us take one or two examples from Nature. 
We shall find some plants restricted to certain 
situations, whilst others have a wide range, or 
