66 
nutritive plants, and of these indeed, he has scarcely mor© 
knowledge than that which is possessed by his wild associ¬ 
ates, the beasts of the forest. Nature to him is a blank— 
All het* endless varieties exist in vain. It is civilization 
alone which opens the stores and discloses the mysteries of 
creation, 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 efiegies filantarum are not the effect 
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 iux- 
* See Wildenow’s Principles of Botany—*and also a Dissertation on 
the Sexes of Plants by Linnaeus. 
