ASPECTS OF NATURE,
  IN
  DIFFERENT LANDS AND DIFFERENT CLIMATES;

  WITH

  Scientific Elucidations.

  BY
  ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.

  TRANSLATED BY MRS. SABINE.

  IN TWO VOLUMES.

  VOL. II.

  LONDON:
  PRINTED FOR
  LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,
  PATERNOSTER ROW; AND
  JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
  1849.




Wilson and Ogilvy, Skinner Street, Snowhill, London.




CONTENTS OF VOL. II.


                                                                   PAGE

  PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS                                               3

    Annotations and Additions                                        33

    Postscript on the Physiognomic Classification of Plants         205

  ON THE STRUCTURE AND MODE OF ACTION OF VOLCANOS, IN DIFFERENT
  PARTS OF THE GLOBE                                                214

    Annotations and Additions                                       243

  THE VITAL FORCE, OR THE RHODIAN GENIUS                            251

    Note 259

  THE PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA, THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE INCA
  ATAHUALLPA, and the First View of the Pacific Ocean, from the
  Crest of the Andes                                                267

  Annotations and Additions                                         303


  General Summary of the CONTENTS of the Second Volume              327

  INDEX                                                             341




ASPECTS OF NATURE

IN

DIFFERENT LANDS AND DIFFERENT CLIMATES.




PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS.


When the active curiosity of man is engaged in interrogating Nature,
or when his imagination dwells on the wide fields of organic creation,
among the multifarious impressions which his mind receives, perhaps
none is so strong and profound as that of the universal profusion
with which life is everywhere distributed. Even on the polar ice the
air resounds with the cries or songs of birds, and with the hum of
insects. Nor is it only the lower dense and vaporous strata of the
atmosphere which are thus filled with life, but also the higher and
more ethereal regions. Whenever Mont Blanc or the summits of the
Cordilleras have been ascended, living creatures have been found there.
On the Chimborazo,[1] eight thousand feet higher than Etna, we found
butterflies and other winged insects, borne by ascending currents of
air to those almost unapproachable solitudes, which man, led by a
restless curiosity or unappeasable thirst of knowledge, treads with
adventurous but cautious steps: like him strangers in those elevated
regions, their presence shows us that the more flexible organization of
animal creation can subsist far beyond the limits at which vegetation
ceases. The condor,[2] the giant of the Vulture tribe, often soared
over our heads above all the summits of the Andes, at an altitude
higher than would be the Peak of Teneriffe if piled on the snow-covered
crests of the Pyrenees. The rapacity of this powerful bird attracts him
to these regions, whence his far-seeing eye may discern the objects
of his pursuit, the soft-wooled Vicunas, which, wandering in herds,
frequent, like the Chamois, the mountain pastures adjacent to the
regions of perpetual snow.

But if the unassisted eye sees life distributed throughout the
atmosphere, when armed with the microscope we discover far other
marvels. Rotiferæ, Brachionæ, and a multitude of microscopic
animalculæ, are carried up by the winds from the surface of evaporating
waters. These minute creatures, motionless and apparently dead, are
borne to and fro in the air until the falling dews bring them back to
the surface of the earth, dissolve the film or envelope which encloses
their transparent rotating bodies,[3] and, probably by means of the
oxygen which all waters contain, breathe new irritability into their
dormant organs.

According to Ehrenberg’s brilliant discovery, the yellow sand or dust
which falls like rain on the Atlantic near the Cape de Verde Islands,
and is occasionally carried even to Italy and Middle Europe, consists
of a multitude of siliceous-shelled microscopic animals. Perhaps
many of them float for years in the upper strata of the atmosphere,
until they are brought down by vertical currents or in accompaniment
with the superior current of the trade-winds, still susceptible of
revivification, and multiplying their species by spontaneous division
in conformity with the particular laws of their organisation.

But, besides creatures fully formed, the atmosphere contains
innumerable germs of future life, such as the eggs of insects and the
seeds of plants, the latter provided with light hairy or feathery
appendages, by means of which they are wafted through the air during
long autumnal wanderings. Even the fertilizing dust or pollen from
the anthers of the male flowers, in species in which the sexes are
separated, is carried over land and sea, by winds and by the agency of
winged insects,[4] to the solitary female plant on other shores. Thus
wherever the glance of the inquirer into Nature penetrates, he sees the
continual dissemination of life, either fully formed or in the germ.

If the aereal ocean in which we are submerged, and above the surface of
which we cannot rise, be indispensable to the existence of organised
beings, they also require a more substantial aliment, which they can
find only at the bottom of this gaseous ocean. This bottom is of two
kinds; the smaller portion consisting of dry land in immediate contact
with the external atmosphere, and the larger portion consisting of
water, which may perhaps have been formed thousands of years ago by
electric agencies from gaseous substances, and which is now incessantly
undergoing decomposition in the laboratories of Nature, in the clouds
and in the pulsating vessels of animals and plants. Organic forms also
descend deep below the surface of the earth, wherever rain or surface
water can percolate either by natural cavities or by mines or other
excavations made by man: the subterranean cryptogamic Flora was an
object of my scientific research in the early part of my life. Thermal
springs of very high temperature nourish small Hydropores, Confervæ,
and Oscillatoria. At Bear Lake, near the Arctic Circle, Richardson saw
the ground, which continues frozen throughout the summer at a depth of
twenty inches, covered with flowering plants.

We do not yet know where life is most abundant,--whether on continents
or in the unfathomed depths of the ocean. Through the excellent work of
Ehrenberg, “Über das Verhalten des kleinsten Lebens,” we have seen the
sphere of organic life extend, and its horizon widen before our eyes,
both in the tropical parts of the ocean and in the fixed or floating
masses of ice of the Antarctic seas. Siliceous-shelled Polygastrica,
and even Coscinodiscæ, with their green ovaries, have been found alive
enveloped in masses of ice only twelve degrees from the Pole; the small
black Glacier flea (Desoria glacialis) and Podurellæ inhabit the narrow
tubular holes examined by Agassiz in the Swiss glaciers. Ehrenberg has
shown that on several microscopic Infusoria (Synedra, Cocconeis) others
live as parasites, and that in the Gallionellæ such is their prodigious
power of development, or capability of division, that in the space of
four days an animalcule invisible to the naked eye can form two cubic
feet of the Bilin polishing slate. In the sea, gelatinous worms, living
or dead, shine like stars,[5] and by their phosphoric light change
the surface of the wide ocean into a sea of fire. Ineffaceable is the
impression made on my mind by the calm nights of the torrid zone, on
the waters of the Pacific. I still see the dark azure of the firmament,
the constellation of the Ship near the zenith, and that of the Cross
declining towards the horizon, shedding through the perfumed air their
soft and planetary lustre; while bright furrows of flashing light
marked the track of the dolphins through the midst of the foaming waves.

Not only the ocean, but also the waters of our marshes, hide from us
an innumerable multitude of strange forms. The naked eye can with
difficulty distinguish the Cyclidias, the Euglenes, and the host of
Naids divisible by branches like the Lemna or Duckweed, of which
they seek the shade. Other creatures inhabit receptacles where the
light cannot penetrate, and an atmosphere variously composed, but
differing from that which we breathe: such are the spotted Ascaris,
which lives beneath the skin of the earthworm; the Leucophra, of
a bright silvery colour, in the interior of the shore Naid; and a
Pentastoma, which inhabits the large pulmonary cells of the rattlesnake
of the tropics.[6] There are animalculæ in the blood of frogs and of
salmon, and even, according to Nordmann, in the fluids of the eyes of
fishes and in the gills of the Bleak. Thus the most hidden recesses
of creation teem with life. We propose in these pages to direct our
attention to the vegetable world, on the existence of which that of
animals is dependent. Plants are incessantly engaged in disposing
into order towards subsequent organization the raw materials of which
the earth is composed: it is their office, by their vital forces or
powers, to prepare those substances which, after undergoing a thousand
modifications, are gradually converted to nobler purposes in the
formation of nervous tissues. In directing our consideration towards
the various families of plants, we shall at the same time glance at
the multitude of animated beings to which they afford nutriment and
protection.

The carpet of flowers and of verdure spread over the naked crust of
our planet is unequally woven; it is thicker where the sun rises high
in the ever cloudless heavens, and thinner towards the poles, in the
less happy climes where returning frosts often destroy the opening
buds of spring, or the ripening fruits of autumn. Everywhere, however,
man finds some plants to minister to his support and enjoyment. If
new lands are formed, the organic forces are ever ready to cover the
naked rock with life. Sometimes, as at an early period among the
Greek Islands, volcanic forces suddenly elevate above the surface
of the boiling waves a rock covered with Scoriæ: sometimes, by a
long-continued and more tranquil series of phenomena, the collective
labours of united Lithophytes[7] raise their cellular dwellings on the
crests of submarine mountains, until, after thousands of years, the
structure reaches the level of the ocean, when the creatures which have
formed it die, leaving a low flat coral island. How are the seeds of
plants brought so immediately to these new shores? by wandering birds,
or by the winds and waves of the ocean? The distance from other coasts
makes it difficult to determine this question; but, no sooner is the
rock of the newly raised islands in direct contact with the atmosphere,
than there is formed on its surface, in our northern countries, a
soft silky net-work, appearing to the naked eye as coloured spots and
patches. Some of these patches are bordered by single or double raised
lines running round their margins; other patches are crossed by similar
lines traversing them in various directions. Gradually the light colour
of the patches becomes darker, the bright yellow which was visible
at a distance changes to brown, and the bluish gray of the Leprarias
becomes a dusty black. The edges of neighbouring patches approach and
run into each other; and on the dark ground thus formed there appear
other lichens, of a circular shape and dazzling whiteness. Thus an
organic film or covering establishes itself by successive layers; and
as mankind, in forming settled communities, pass through different
stages of civilisation, so is the gradual propagation and extension
of plants connected with determinate physical laws. Lichens form the
first covering of the naked rock, where afterwards lofty forest trees
rear their airy summits. The successive growth of mosses, grasses,
herbaceous plants, and shrubs or bushes, occupies the intervening
period of long but undetermined duration. The part which lichens and
mosses perform in the northern countries is effected within the tropics
by Portulacas, Gomphrenas, and other low and succulent shore plants.
The history of the vegetable covering of our planet, and its gradual
propagation over the desert crust of the earth, has its epochs, as
well as that of the migrations of the animal world.

Yet although organic life is everywhere diffused, and the organic
powers are incessantly at work in reconnecting with each other the
elements set free by death or dissolution, the abundance and variety
of organised beings, and the rapidity with which they are renewed,
differ in different climates. In the cold zones, the activity of
organic life undergoes a temporary suspension during a portion of the
year by frost; fluidity is an essential condition of life or vital
action, and animals and plants, with the exception of mosses and other
cryptogamia, are in those regions buried for several months of each
year in winter sleep. Over a large part of the earth, therefore, there
could only be developed organic forms capable of supporting either
a considerable diminution of heat, or, being without leaves, a long
interruption of the vital functions. Thus we see variety and grace of
form, mixture of colours, and generally the perpetually youthful energy
and vigour of organic life, increase as we approach the tropics. This
increase can be denied only by those who have never quitted Europe, or
who have neglected the study of physical geography. When, leaving our
oak forests, we traverse the Alps or the Pyrenees, and enter Italy or
Spain, or when we direct our attention to some of the African shores
of the Mediterranean, we might easily be led to draw the erroneous
inference that hot countries are marked by the absence of trees. But
those who do so, forget that the South of Europe wore a different
aspect on the first arrival of Pelasgian or Carthaginian colonies; they
forget that an ancient civilisation causes the forests to recede more
and more, and that the wants and restless activity of large communities
of men gradually despoil the face of the earth of the refreshing
shades which still rejoice the eye in Northern and Middle Europe, and
which, even more than any historic documents, prove the recent date
and youthful age of our civilization. The great catastrophe which
occasioned the formation of the Mediterranean, when the swollen waters
of what was previously an immense lake burst through the barriers
of the Dardanelles and of the Pillars of Hercules, appears to have
stripped the adjacent countries of a large portion of their coating of
vegetable mould. The traditions of Samothrace,[8] handed down to us
by Grecian writers, appear to indicate the recentness of the epoch of
the ravages caused by this great change. In all the countries which
surround the Mediterranean, and which are characterised by beds of the
tertiary and cretaceous periods (nummulitic limestone and neocomian
rocks), great part of the surface of the earth consists of naked rock.
One especial cause of the picturesque beauty of Italian scenery is the
contrast thus afforded between the bare rock, and the islands if I
may so call them of luxuriant vegetation scattered over its surface.
Wherever the rock is less intersected with fissures, so that it retains
water at the surface, and where it is covered with vegetable mould,
there, as on the enchanting shores of the Lake of Albano, Italy has her
oak forests, with glades as deeply embowered and verdure as fresh as
those which we admire in the North of Europe.

The deserts to the south of the Atlas, and the immense plains or
steppes of South America, must be regarded as only local phenomena. The
latter, the South American steppes, are clothed, in the rainy season
at least, with grass, and with low-growing almost herbaceous mimosas.
The African deserts are, indeed, at all seasons devoid of vegetation;
seas of sand, surrounded by forest shores clothed with perpetual
verdure. A few scattered fan-palms alone recall to the wanderer’s
recollection that these awful solitudes belong to the domain of the
same animated terrestrial creation which is elsewhere so rich and so
varied. The fantastic play of the mirage, occasioned by the effects of
radiant heat, sometimes causes these palm trees to appear divided from
the ground and hovering above its surface, and sometimes shews their
inverted image reflected in strata of air undulating like the waves of
the sea. On the west of the great Peruvian chain of the Andes, on the
coasts of the Pacific, I have passed entire weeks in traversing similar
deserts destitute of water.

The origin of extensive arid tracts destitute of plants, in the midst
of countries rich in luxuriant vegetation, is a geognostical problem
which has hitherto been but little considered, but which has doubtless
depended on ancient revolutions of nature, such as inundations or great
volcanic changes. When once a region has lost the covering of plants
with which it was invested, if the sands are loose and mobile and are
destitute of springs, and if the heated atmosphere, forming constantly
ascending currents, prevents precipitation taking place from clouds[9],
thousands of years may elapse ere organic life can pass from the
verdant shores to the interior of the sandy sea, and repossess itself
of the domain from which it had been banished.

Those, therefore, who can view nature with a comprehensive glance and
apart from local phenomena, may see from the poles to the equator
organic life and vigour gradually augment with the augmentation of
vivifying heat. But, in the course of this progressive increase there
are reserved to each zone its own peculiar beauties; to the tropics,
variety and grandeur of vegetable forms; to the north, the aspect of
its meadows and green pastures, and the periodic reawakening of nature
at the first breath of the mild air of spring. Each zone, besides its
own peculiar advantages, has its own distinctive character. Primeval
laws of organisation, notwithstanding a certain degree of freedom in
the abnormal development of single parts, bind all animal and vegetable
forms to fixed ever-recurring types. As we recognise in distinct
organic beings a determinate physiognomy, and as descriptive botany and
zoology, in the restricted sense of the terms, consist in a detailed
analysis of animal and vegetable forms, so each region of the earth
has a natural physiognomy peculiar to itself. The idea indicated by
the painter by expressions such as “Swiss nature,” “Italian sky,” &c.,
rests on a partial perception of this local character in the aspect
of nature. The azure of the sky, the lights and shadows, the haze
resting on the distance, the forms of animals, the succulency of the
plants and herbage, the brightness of the foliage, the outline of
the mountains, are all elements which determine the total impression
characteristic of each district or region. It is true that in every
zone the same kinds of rocks, trachyte, basalt, porphyritic schists,
and dolomite, form groups having the same physiognomy and aspect.
The greenstone precipices of South America and Mexico resemble those
of the Fichtel-Gebirge of Germany, just as among animals the form of
the Allco, or native race of dogs of the New Continent, corresponds
perfectly with that of the European race. For the inorganic crust of
the globe shews itself independent of climatic influences; whether it
be that differences of climate depending on differences of latitude
were more recent than the formation of the rocks, or that the mass
of the earth in solidifying and parting with its heat regulated its
own temperature,[10] instead of receiving it from without. Thus all
the kinds of rock with which we are acquainted may be met with in all
parts of the globe, and everywhere affect the same characteristic
forms. Everywhere basalt rises in twin mountains and truncated cones;
everywhere the porphyritic trap appears in grotesquely arranged masses,
and granite in rounded summits. Also similar forms of trees--pines
and oaks--adorn the declivities of the mountains of Sweden, and
those of the most southern part of Mexico.[11] Yet, notwithstanding
these correspondences of form, and this similarity of outline in the
component parts of the picture, their grouping gives to the whole the
greatest difference of character.

Mineralogy is not more distinct from geology than is the individual
description of natural objects from a general description of the
physiognomy of nature. George Forster, in the narrative of his voyages,
and in his other publications,--Goethe, in the descriptions of nature
which so many of his immortal works contain,--Buffon, Bernardin de
St. Pierre, and Chateaubriand, have traced with inimitable truth of
description the character of some of the zones into which the earth
is divided. Not only do such descriptions afford us mental enjoyment
of a high order, but the knowledge of the character which nature
assumes in different regions is moreover intimately connected with the
history of man, and of his civilisation. For although the commencement
of this civilisation is not solely determined by physical relations,
yet the direction which it takes, the national character, and the
more grave or gay dispositions of men, are dependent in a very high
degree on climatic influences. How powerfully have the skies of Greece
acted on its inhabitants! The nations settled in the fair and happy
regions bounded by the Euphrates, the Halys, and the Egean Sea, also
early attained amenity of manners and delicacy of sentiment. When in
the middle ages religious enthusiasm suddenly re-opened the sacred
East to the nations of Europe who were sinking back into barbarism,
our ancestors in returning to their homes brought with them gentler
manners, acquired in those delightful valleys. The poetry of the
Greeks, and the ruder songs of the primitive northern nations, owe
great part of their peculiar character to the aspect of the plants and
animals seen by the bard, to the mountains and valleys which surrounded
him, and to the air which he breathed. And to recall more familiar
objects, who does not feel himself differently affected in the dark
shade of the beech, on hills crowned with scattered fir-trees, or on
the turfy pasture, where the wind rustles in the trembling foliage
of the birch? These trees of our native land have often suggested or
recalled to our minds images and thoughts, either of a melancholy, of a
grave and elevating, or of a cheerful character. The influence of the
physical on the moral world,--that reciprocal and mysterious action
and reaction of the material and the immaterial,--gives to the study
of nature, when regarded from higher points of view, a peculiar charm,
still too little recognised.

But if the characteristic aspect of different portions of the earth’s
surface depends conjointly on all external phenomena,--if the contours
of the mountains, the physiognomy of plants and animals, the azure
of the sky, the form of the clouds, and the transparency of the
atmosphere, all combine in forming that general impression which is
the result of the whole, yet it cannot be denied that the vegetable
covering with which the whole earth is adorned is the principal
element in the impression. Animal forms are deficient in mass, and the
individual power of motion which animals possess, as well as often the
smallness of their size, withdraw them from our sight. The vegetable
forms, on the contrary, produce a greater effect by their magnitude
and by their constant presence. The age of trees is marked by their
size, and the union of age with the manifestation of constantly renewed
vigour is a charm peculiar to the vegetable kingdom. The gigantic
Dragon-tree of Orotava,[12] (as sacred in the eyes of the inhabitants
of the Canaries as the olive-tree in the Citadel of Athens, or the
Elm of Ephesus), the diameter of which I found, when I visited those
Islands, to be more than 16 feet, had the same colossal size, when the
French adventurers, the Béthencourts, conquered these gardens of the
Hesperides in the beginning of the fifteenth century; yet it still
flourishes, as if in perpetual youth, bearing flowers and fruit. A
tropical forest of Hymenæas and Cæsalpinieæ may perhaps present to us a
monument of more than a thousand years’ standing.

If we embrace in one general view the different species of phænogamous
plants at present contained in herbariums, the number of which may
now be estimated at considerably above 80000,[13] we shall recognise
in this prodigious multitude certain leading forms to which many
others may be referred. In determining these leading forms or types,
on the individual beauty, the distribution, and the grouping of which
the physiognomy of the vegetation of a country depends, we must not
follow the march of systems of botany, in which from other motives
the parts chiefly regarded are the smaller organs of propagation, the
flowers and the fruit; we must, on the contrary, consider solely that
which by its mass stamps a peculiar character on the total impression
produced, or on the aspect of the country. Among the leading forms of
vegetation to which I allude, there are, indeed, some which coincide
with families belonging to the “natural systems” of botanists. Such are
the forms of Bananas, Palms, Casuarineæ, and Coniferæ. But the botanic
systematist divides many groups which the physiognomist is obliged to
unite. When plants or trees present themselves in masses, the outlines
and distribution of the leaves and the form of the stems and of the
branches are blended together. The painter (and here the artist’s
delicate tact and appreciation of nature are demanded) can distinguish
in the middle distance and background of a landscape groves of palms or
pines from beech woods, but he cannot distinguish the latter from woods
consisting of other deciduous forest trees.

Above sixteen different forms of vegetation are principally concerned
in determining the aspect or physiognomy of Nature. I mention only
those which I have observed in the course of my travels both in the
New and Old Continents, where during many years I have attentively
examined the vegetation of the regions comprised between the 60th
degree of North and the 12th degree of South latitude. The number of
these forms will no doubt be considerably augmented when travellers
shall have penetrated farther into the interior of Continents, and
discovered new genera of plants. In the South-eastern part of Asia,
the interior of Africa and of New Holland, and in South America from
the river of the Amazons to the province of Chiquitos, the vegetation
is still entirely unknown to us. How if at some future time a country
should be discovered in which ligneous fungi, Cenomyce rangiferina,
or mosses, should form tall trees? The Neckera dendroides, a German
species of moss, is in fact arborescent; and bamboos (which are
arborescent grasses) and the tree ferns of the tropics, which are often
higher than our lime-trees and alders, now present to the European a
sight as surprising as would be that of a forest of tree mosses to its
discoverer. The absolute size and the degree of development attained by
organic forms of the same family (whether plants or animals), depend
on laws which are still unknown to us. In each of the great divisions
of the animal kingdom, insects, crustacea, reptiles, birds, fishes,
or mammalia, the size of the body oscillates between certain extreme
limits. But these limits, which have been established by observation as
far as it has yet gone, may be corrected by the discovery of species
with which we are still unacquainted.

In land animals the higher temperatures of the low latitudes appear
to have favoured organic development. The small and slender form of
our lizards is exchanged in the south for the gigantic, heavy, and
cuirassed bodies of crocodiles. In the formidable tiger, lion, and
jaguar, we see repeated, on a larger scale, the form of the common
cat, one of the smallest of our domestic animals. If we penetrate
into the interior of the earth, and search the cemeteries in which
the plants and animals of the ancient world lie entombed, the fossil
remains which we discover not only announce a distribution inconsistent
with our present climates,--they also disclose to us gigantic forms
that contrast no less with those which now surround us, than does the
simple heroism of the Greeks with the character of human greatness in
modern times. Has the temperature of our planet undergone considerable
changes,--possibly of periodical recurrence? If the proportion
between land and sea, and even the height of the aerial ocean and
its pressure,[14] have not always been the same, the physiognomy
of nature, and the dimensions and forms of organised beings, must
also have been subjected to various alterations. Huge Pachydermata,
Mastodons, Owen’s Mylodon robustus, and the Colossochelys, a
land-tortoise above six feet high, have existed, and in the vegetable
kingdom there have been forests composed of gigantic Lepidodendra,
cactus-like Stigmarias, and numerous kinds of Cycadeæ. Unable to
depict fully according to its present features the physiognomy of
our planet in this its later age, I will only venture to attempt to
indicate the characters which principally distinguish those vegetable
groups which appear to me to be most strongly marked by physiognomic
differences. However favoured by the richness and flexibility of our
native language, it is still an arduous and hazardous undertaking
when we attempt to trace in words that which belongs rather to the
imitative art of the painter. I feel also the necessity of avoiding as
much as possible the wearisome impression almost inseparable from all
lengthened enumerations.

We will begin with palms,[15] the loftiest and noblest of all vegetable
forms, that to which the prize of beauty has been assigned by the
concurrent voice of nations in all ages; for the earliest civilisation
of mankind belonged to countries bordering on the region of palms,
and to parts of Asia where they abound. Their lofty, slender, ringed,
and, in some cases, prickly stems, terminate in aspiring and shining
either fanlike or pinnated foliage. The leaves are frequently curled,
like those of some gramineæ. Smooth polished stems of palms carefully
measured by me had attained 192 English feet in height. In receding
from the equator and approaching the temperate zone, palms diminish in
height and beauty. The indigenous vegetation of Europe only comprises a
single representative of this form of plants, the sea-coast Dwarf-palm
or Chamærops, which, in Spain and Italy, extends as far north as the
44th parallel of latitude. The true climate of palms has a mean annual
temperature of 20°.5-22° Reaumur (78°.2-81°.5 Fahr). The Date, which
is much inferior in beauty to several other genera, has been brought
from Africa to the south of Europe, where it lives, but can scarcely be
said to flourish, in a mean temperature not exceeding 12°-13°.5 Reaumur
(59°-62°.4 Fahr). Stems of palms and fossil bones of elephants are
found buried beneath the surface of the earth in northern countries, in
positions which make it appear probable that their presence is not to
be accounted for by their having been drifted thither from the tropics,
and we are led to infer that in the course of the great revolutions
which our planet has undergone, great changes of climate, and of the
physiognomy of nature as dependent on climate, have taken place.

In all parts of the globe the palm form is accompanied by that of
Plantains or Bananas; the Scitamineæ and Musaceæ of botanists,
Heliconia, Amomum, and Strelitzia. In this form, the stems, which are
low, succulent, and almost herbaceous, are surmounted by long, silky,
delicately-veined leaves of a thin loose texture, and bright and
beautiful verdure. Groves of plantains and bananas form the ornament
of moist places in the equatorial regions. It is on their fruits
that the subsistence of a large part of the inhabitants of the torrid
zone chiefly depends, and, like the farinaceous cereals of the north,
they have followed man from the infancy of his civilisation[16]. The
aboriginal site of this nutritious plant is placed by some Asiatic
fables or traditions on the banks of the Euphrates, and by others, with
more probability, at the foot of the Himalaya. Grecian fables named
the fields of Enna as the happy native land of the cereals; and if in
northern climes, where corn is cultivated in immense unbroken fields,
their monotonous aspect adds but little to the beauty of the landscape,
the inhabitant of the tropics, on the other hand, in rearing groves
of plantains wherever he fixes his habitation, contributes to the
adornment of the earth’s surface by the extension of one of the most
noble and beautiful forms of the vegetable world.

The form of Malvaceæ[17] and Bombaceæ, represented by Ceiba,
Cavanillesia, and the Mexican hand-tree Cheirostemon, has enormously
thick trunks; large, soft, woolly leaves, either heart-shaped or
indented; and superb flowers frequently of a purple or crimson hue.
It is to this group of plants that the Baobab, or monkey bread-tree,
(Adansonia digitata), belongs, which, with a very moderate elevation,
has a diameter of 32 English feet, and is probably the largest and most
ancient organic monument on our planet. In Italy the Malvaceæ already
begin to impart to the vegetation a peculiar southern character.

The delicately pinnated foliage of the Mimosa form[18], of which
Acacia, Desmanthus, Gleditschia, Porleria, and Tamarindus are
important members, is entirely wanting in our temperate zone in the old
continent, though found in the United States, where, in corresponding
latitudes, vegetation is more varied and more vigorous than in Europe.
The umbrella-like arrangement of the branches, resembling that seen in
the stone pine of Italy, is very frequent among the Mimosas. The deep
blue of the tropic sky seen through their finely divided foliage has an
extremely picturesque effect.

The Heath form[19] belongs more especially to the old world, and
particularly to the African continent and islands: taking for our
guides physiognomic character and general aspect, we may class under
it the Epacrideæ and Diosmeæ, many Proteaceæ, and those Australian
Acacias which have mere leaf-stalks instead of leaves (phyllodias).
This form has some points of similarity with that of needle trees, and
the partial resemblance enhances the effect of the pleasing contrast
which, when these two are placed together, is afforded by the abundant
bell-shaped blossoms of the heaths. Arborescent heaths, like some other
African plants, extend to the northern shores of the Mediterranean:
they adorn Italy, and the cistus-covered grounds of the south of
Spain. The declivity of the Peak of Teneriffe is the locality where I
have seen them growing with the greatest luxuriance. In the countries
adjoining the Baltic, and farther to the north, the aspect of this form
of plants is unwelcome, as announcing sterility. Our heaths, Erica
(Calluna) vulgaris, Erica tetralix, E. carnea, and E. cinerea, are
social plants, and for centuries agricultural nations have combated
their advance with little success. It is remarkable that the extensive
genus which is the leading representative of this form appears to be
almost limited to one side of our planet. Of the 300 known species of
Erica only one has been discovered across the whole extent of the New
Continent, from Pensylvania and Labrador to Nootka and Alashka.

The Cactus form,[20], on the other hand, is almost exclusively
American. Sometimes spherical, sometimes articulated or jointed,
and sometimes assuming the shape of tall upright polygonal columns
resembling the pipes of an organ, this group presents the most striking
contrast to those of Liliaceæ and Bananas. It comprises some of the
plants to which Bernardin de St. Pierre has applied the term of
“vegetable fountains in the desert.” In the waterless plains of South
America the animals suffering from thirst seek the melon-cactus, a
spherical plant half buried in the dry sand, and encased in formidable
prickles, but of which the interior abounds in refreshing juice. The
stems of the columnar cactus rise to a height of 30 or 32 feet; they
are often covered with lichens, and, dividing into candelabra-like
branches, resemble, in physiognomy, some of the Euphorbias of Africa.

While the above-mentioned plants flourish in deserts almost devoid of
other vegetation, the Orchideæ[21] enliven the clefts of the wildest
rocks, and the trunks of tropical trees blackened by excess of heat.
This form (to which the Vanilla belongs) is distinguished by its bright
green succulent leaves, and by its flowers of many colours and strange
and curious shape, sometimes resembling that of winged insects, and
sometimes that of the birds which are attracted by the perfume of the
honey vessels. Such is their number and variety that, to mention only
a limited district, the entire life of a painter would be too short
for the delineation of all the magnificent Orchideæ which adorn the
recesses of the deep valleys of the Andes of Peru.

The Casuarina form[22], leafless, like almost all species of Cactus,
consists of trees with branches resembling the stalks of our
Equisetums. It is found only in the islands of the Pacific and in
India, but traces of the same singular rather than beautiful type are
seen in other parts of the world. Plumier’s Equisetum altissimum,
Forskäl’s Ephedra aphylla from the north of Africa, the Peruvian
Colletias, and the Siberian Calligonum pallasia, are nearly allied to
the Casuarina form.

As the Banana form shews the greatest expansion, so the greatest
contraction of the leaf-vessels is shewn in Casuarinas, and in the form
of Needle trees[23] (Coniferæ). Pines, Thuias, and Cypresses, belong
to this form, which prevails in northern regions, and is comparatively
rare within the tropics: in Dammara and Salisburia the leaves, though
they may still be termed needle-shaped, are broader. In the colder
latitudes the never-failing verdure of this form of trees cheers the
desolate winter landscape, and tells to the inhabitants of those
regions that when snow and ice cover the ground the inward life of
plants, like the Promethean fire, is never extinct upon our planet.

Like mosses and lichens in our latitudes, and like orchideæ in the
tropical zone, plants of the Pothos form[24] clothe parasitically the
trunks of aged and decaying forest trees: succulent herbaceous stalks
support large leaves, sometimes sagittate, sometimes either digitate
or elongate, but always with thick veins. The flowers of the Aroideæ
are cased in hooded spathes or sheaths, and in some of them when they
expand a sensible increase of vital heat is perceived. Stemless, they
put forth aerial roots. Pothos, Dracontium, Caladium, and Arum, all
belong to this form, which prevails chiefly in the tropical world. On
the Spanish and Italian shores of the Mediterranean, Arums combine
with the succulent Tussilago, the Acanthus, and Thistles which are
almost arborescent, to indicate the increasing luxuriance of southern
vegetation.

Next to the last-mentioned form of which the Pothos and Arum are
representatives, I place a form with which, in the hottest parts of
South America, it is frequently associated,--that of the tropical
twining rope-plants, or Lianes,[25] which display in those regions, in
Paullinias, Banisterias, Bignonias, and Passifloras, the utmost vigour
of vegetation. It is represented to us in the temperate latitudes by
our twining hops, and by our grape vines. On the banks of the Orinoco
the leafless branches of the Bauhinias are often between 40 and 50 feet
long: sometimes they hang down perpendicularly from the high top of the
Swietenia, and sometimes they are stretched obliquely like the cordage
of a ship: the tiger-cats climb up and descend by them with wonderful
agility.

In strong contrast with the extreme flexibility and fresh
light-coloured verdure of the climbing plants, of which we have
just been speaking, are the rigid self-supporting growth and bluish
hue of the form of Aloes,[26] which, instead of pliant stems and
branches of enormous length, are either without stems altogether, or
have branchless stems. The leaves, which are succulent, thick, and
fleshy, and terminate in long points, radiate from a centre and form
a closely crowded tuft. The tall-stemmed aloes are not found in close
clusters or thickets like other social or gregarious plants or trees;
they stand singly in arid plains, and impart thereby to the tropical
regions in which they are found a peculiar, melancholy, and I would
almost venture to call it, African character. Taking for our guides
resemblance in physiognomy, and influence on the impression produced by
the landscape, we place together under the head of the Aloe form, (from
among the Bromeliaceæ) the Pitcairnias, which in the chain of the Andes
grow out of clefts in the rocks; the great Pournetia pyramidata, (the
Atschupalla of the elevated plains of New Granada); the American Aloe,
(Agave); Bromelia aranas and B. karatas; from among the Euphorbiaceæ
the rare species which have thick short candelabra-like divided
stems; from the family of Asphodeleæ the African Aloe and the Dragon
tree, (Dracæna draco); and lastly, from among the Liliaceæ, the tall
flowering Yucca.

If the Aloe form is characterised by an almost mournful repose and
immobility, the form of Gramineæ,[27] especially the physiognomy
of arborescent grasses, is characterised, on the contrary, by an
expression of cheerfulness and of airy grace and tremulous lightness,
combined with lofty stature. Both in the East and West Indies groves of
Bamboo form shaded over-arching walks or avenues. The smooth polished
and often lightly-waving and bending stems of these tropical grasses
are taller than our alders and oaks. The form of Gramineæ begins
even in Italy, in the Arundo donax, to rise from the ground, and to
determine by height as well as mass the natural character and aspect of
the country.

The form of Ferns,[28] as well as that of Grasses, becomes ennobled
in the hotter parts of the globe. Arborescent ferns, when they reach
a height of above 40 feet, have something of a palm-like appearance;
but their stems are less slender, shorter, and more rough and scaly
than those of palms. Their foliage is more delicate, of a thinner and
more translucent texture, and the minutely indented margins of the
fronds are finely and sharply cut. Tree ferns belong almost entirely
to the tropical zone, but in that zone they seek by preference the
more tempered heat of a moderate elevation above the level of the sea,
and mountains two or three thousand feet high may be regarded as their
principal seat. In South America the arborescent ferns are usually
found associated will the tree which has conferred such benefits on
mankind by its fever-healing bark. Both indicate by their presence the
happy region where reigns a soft perpetual spring.

I will next name the form of Liliaceeous plants,[29] (Amaryllis,
Ixia, Gladiolus, Pancratium) with their flag-like leaves and superb
blossoms, of which Southern Africa is the principal country; also the
Willow form[30], which is indigenous in all parts of the globe, and
is represented in the elevated plains of Quito, (not in the shape
of the leaves but in that of the ramification), by Schinus Molle;
Myrtaceæ[31], (Metrosideros, Eucalyptus, Escallonia myrtilloides);
Melastomaceæ[32], and the Laurel form[33].

It would be an enterprise worthy of a great artist to study the aspect
and character of all these vegetable groups, not merely in hot-houses
or in the descriptions of botanists, but in their native grandeur in
the tropical zone. How interesting and instructive to the landscape
painter[34] would be a work which should present to the eye, first
separately and then in combination and contrast, the leading forms
which have been here enumerated! How picturesque is the aspect of
tree-ferns spreading their delicate fronds above the laurel-oaks of
Mexico; or groups of plantains over-shadowed by arborescent grasses
(Guaduas and Bamboos)! It is the artist’s privilege, having studied
these groups, to analyse them: and thus in his hands the grand and
beautiful form of nature which he would pourtray resolves itself, (if
I may venture on the expression) like the written works of men, into a
few simple elements.

It is under the burning rays of a tropical sun that vegetation displays
its most majestic forms. In the cold north the bark of trees is covered
with lichens and mosses, whilst between the tropics the Cymbidium and
fragrant Vanilla enliven the trunks of the Anacardias, and of the
gigantic fig trees. The fresh verdure of the Pothos leaves, and of the
Dracontias, contrasts with the many-coloured flowers of the Orchideæ.
Climbing Bauhinias, Passifloras, and yellow flowering Banisterias,
twine round the trunks of the forest trees. Delicate blossoms spring
from the roots of the Theobroma, and from the thick and rough bark of
the Crescentias and the Gustavia.[35] In the midst of this profusion of
flowers and fruits, and in the luxuriant intertwinings of the climbing
plants, the naturalist often finds it difficult to discover to which
stem the different leaves and flowers really belong. A single tree
adorned with Paullinias, Bignonias, and Dendrobium, forms a group of
plants which, if disentangled and separated from each other, would
cover a considerable space of ground.

In the tropics vegetation is generally of a fresher verdure, more
luxuriant and succulent, and adorned with larger and more shining
leaves than in our northern climates. The “social” plants, which often
impart so uniform and monotonous a character to European countries,
are almost entirely absent in the Equatorial regions. Trees almost as
lofty as our oaks are adorned with flowers as large and as beautiful
as our lilies. On the shady banks of the Rio Magdalena in South
America, there grows a climbing Aristolochia bearing flowers four
feet in circumference, which the Indian boys draw over their heads
in sport, and wear as hats or helmets.[36] In the islands of the
Indian Archipelago the flower of the Rafflesia is nearly three feet in
diameter, and weighs above fourteen pounds.

The great elevation attained in several tropical countries not only
by single mountains but even by extensive districts, enables the
inhabitants of the torrid zone--surrounded by palms, bananas, and the
other beautiful forms proper to those latitudes--to behold also those
vegetable forms which, demanding a cooler temperature, would seem to
belong to other zones. Elevation above the level of the sea gives
this cooler temperature even in the hottest parts of the earth; and
Cypresses, Pines, Oaks, Berberries and Alders, (nearly allied to our
own) cover the mountainous districts and elevated plains of Southern
Mexico and the chain of the Andes at the Equator. Thus it is given to
man in those regions to behold without quitting his native land all
the forms of vegetation dispersed over the globe, and all the shining
worlds which stud the heavenly vault from pole to pole.[37]

These and many other of the enjoyments which Nature affords are wanting
to the nations of the North. Many constellations, and many vegetable
forms,--and of the latter, those which are most beautiful, (palms, tree
ferns, plantains, arborescent grasses, and the finely-divided feathery
foliage of the Mimosas),--remain for ever unknown to them. Individual
plants languishing in our hot-houses can give but a very faint idea of
the majestic vegetation of the tropical zone. But the high cultivation
of our languages, the glowing fancy of the poet, and the imitative art
of the painter, open to us sources whence flow abundant compensations,
and from whence our imagination can derive the living image of that
more vigorous nature which other climes display. In the frigid North,
in the midst of the barren heath, the solitary student can appropriate
mentally all that has been discovered in the most distant regions, and
can create within himself a world free and imperishable as the spirit
by which it is conceived.




ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS.


[1] p. 3.--“_On the Chimborazo, eight thousand feet higher than Etna._”

Small singing birds, and even butterflies, are found at sea at great
distances from the coast, (as I have several times had opportunities of
observing in the Pacific), being carried there by the force of the wind
when storms come off the land. In the same involuntary manner insects
are transported into the upper regions of the atmosphere, 16000 or
19000 feet above the plains. The heated crust of the earth occasions
an ascending vertical current of air, by which light bodies are borne
upwards. M. Boussingault, an excellent chemist who, as Professor at
the newly instituted Mining Academy at Santa Fé de Bogota, visited
the Gneiss Mountains of Caraccas, in ascending to the summit of the
Silla witnessed, together with his companion Don Mariano de Rivero,
a phenomenon affording a remarkable ocular demonstration of the fact
of a vertically ascending current. They saw in the middle of the day,
about noon, whitish shining bodies rise from the valley of Caraccas to
the summit of the Silla, which is 5400 (5755 E.) feet high, and then
sink down towards the neighbouring sea coast. These movements continued
uninterruptedly for the space of an hour, and the objects, which at
first were mistaken for a flock of small birds, proved to be small
agglomerations of straws or blades of grass. Boussingault sent me some
of the straws, which were immediately recognised by Professor Kunth
for a species of Vilfa, a genus which, together with Agrostis, is very
abundant in the provinces of Caraccas and Cumana: it was the Vilfa
tenacissima of our Synopsis Plantarum æquinoctialium Orbis Novi, T. i.
p. 205. Saussure found butterflies on Mont Blanc, as did Ramond in the
solitudes which surround the summit of the Mont Perdu. When Bonpland,
Carlos Montufar, and myself, reached, on the 23d of June, 1802, on the
eastern declivity of the Chimborazo, the height of 18096 (19286 E.)
feet--a height at which the barometer sank to 13 inches 11-1/5 lines
(14.850 English inches), we saw winged insects fluttering around us.
We could see that they were Dipteras, resembling flies, but on a sharp
ridge of rock (cuchilla) often only ten inches wide, between steeply
descending masses of snow, it was impossible to catch the insects. The
height at which we saw them was nearly the same at which the uncovered
trachytic rock, piercing through the eternal snows, gave to our view,
in Lecidea geographica, the last traces of vegetation. The insects were
flying at a height of about 2850 toises (18225 E. feet), or about 2600
E. feet higher than Mont Blanc. Somewhat lower down, at about 2600
toises (10626 E. feet), also therefore within the region of perpetual
snow, Bonpland had seen yellow butterflies flying very near the ground.
According to our present knowledge the Mammalia which live nearest to
the region of perpetual snow are in the Swiss Alps, the Marmot which
sleeps through the winter, and a very small field-mouse (Hypudæus
nivalis), described by Martins, which on the Faulhorn lays up a store
of the roots of phænogamous alpine plants almost under the snow. (Actes
de la Société Helvétique, 1843, p. 324.) The beautiful Chinchilla, of
which the bright and silky fur is so much prized, is often supposed by
Europeans to be an inhabitant of the high mountain regions of Chili:
this, however, is an error; the Chinchilla laniger (Gray) only lives in
the mild temperature of the lower zone, and is not found farther south
than the parallel of 35°. (Claudio Gay, Historia fisica y politica de
Chile, Zoologia, 1844, p. 91.)

While on our European Alps, Lecideas, Parmelias, and Umbilicarias form
only a few coloured patches on the rocks which are not completely
covered with snow, in the Andes, beautiful flowering phænogamous
plants, first described by us, live at elevations of thirteen to
fourteen thousand feet (13700 to nearly 15000 E.) We found there
woolly species of Culcitium and Espeletia (C. nivale, C. rufescens,
and C. reflexum, E. grandiflora, and E. argentea), Sida pichinchensis,
Ranunculus nubigenus, R. Gusmanni with red or orange-coloured blossoms,
the small moss-like umbelliferous plant Myrrhis andicola, and
Fragosa arctioides. On the declivity of the Chimborazo the Saxifraga
boussingaulti, described by Adolph Brongniart, grows beyond the
limit of perpetual snow on loose boulders of rock, at 14796 (15770
E.) feet above the level of the sea, not at 17000, as stated in two
estimable English journals. (Compare my Asie Centrale, T. iii. p. 262,
with Hooker, Journal of Botany, vol. i. 1834, p. 327, and Edinburgh
New Philosophical Journal, vol. xvii. 1834, p. 380.) The Saxifrage
discovered by Boussingault is certainly, up to the present time, the
highest known phænogamous plant on the surface of the earth.

The perpendicular height of the Chimborazo is, according to my
trigonometrical measurement, 3350 toises (21422 E. feet.) (Recueil
d’Observ. Astron., vol. i., Introd. p. lxxii.) This result is
intermediate between those given by French and Spanish academicians.
The differences depend not on different assumptions for refraction,
but on differences in the reduction of the measured base lines to
the level of the sea. In the Andes this reduction could only be made
by the barometer, and thus every measurement called a trigonometric
measurement is also a barometric one, of which the result differs
according to the first term in the formula employed. If in chains of
mountains of great mass, such as the Andes, we insist on determining
the greater part of the whole altitude trigonometrically, measuring
from a low and distant point in the plain or nearly at the level of
the sea, we can only obtain very small angles of altitude. On the
other hand, not only is it difficult to find a convenient base among
mountains, but also every step increases the portion of the height
which must be determined barometrically. These difficulties have to be
encountered by every traveller who selects, among the elevated plains
which surround the Andes, the station at which he may execute his
geodesical measurements. My measurement of the Chimborazo was made
from the plain of Tapia, which is covered with pumice. It is situated
to the west of the Rio Chambo, and its elevation, as determined by the
barometer, is 1482 toises (9477 E. feet.) The Llanos de Luisa, and
still more the plain of Sisgun, which is 1900 toises (12150 E. feet)
high, would have given greater angles of altitude; I had prepared
everything for making the measurement at the latter station when thick
clouds concealed the summit of Chimborazo.

Those who are engaged in investigations on languages may not be
unwilling to find here some conjectures respecting the etymology of
the widely celebrated name of Chimborazo. Chimbo is the name of the
Corregimiento or District in which the mountain of Chimborazo is
situated. La Condamine (Voyage à l’Equateur, 1751, p. 184) deduces
Chimbo from “chimpani,” “to pass over a river.” Chimbo-raço signifies,
according to him, “la neige de l’autre bord,” because at the village
of Chimbo one crosses a stream in full view of the enormous snow-clad
mountain. (In the Quichua language “chimpa” signifies the “other, or
farther, side;” and chimpani signifies to pass or cross over a river,
a bridge, &c.) Several natives of the province of Quito have assured
me that Chimborazo signifies merely “the snow of Chimbo.” We find the
same termination in Carguai-razo. But razo appears to be a provincial
word. The Jesuit Holguin, (whose excellent “Vocabulario de la Lengua
general de todo el Peru llamada Lengua Qquichua ó del Inca,” printed at
Lima in 1608, is in my possession,) knows nothing of the word “razo.”
The genuine word for snow is “ritti.” On the other hand, my learned
friend Professor Buschmann remarks that in the Chinchaysuyo dialect
(spoken north of Cuzco up to Quito and Pasto,) raju (the _j_ apparently
guttural) signifies snow; see the word in Juan de Figueredo’s notice
of Chinchaysuyo words appended to Diego de Torres Rubio, Arte, y
Vocabulario de la Lengua Quichua, reimpr. en Lima, 1754; fol. 222,
b. For the two first syllables of the name of the mountain, and for
the village of Chimbo, (as chimpa and chimpani suit badly on account
of the _a_), we may find a definite signification by means of the
Quichua word chimpu, an expression used for a coloured thread or fringe
(señal de lana, hilo ó borlilla de colores),--for the red of the sky
(arreboles),--and for a halo round the sun or moon. One may try to
derive the name of the mountain directly from this word, without the
intervention of the village or district. In any case, and whatever
the etymology of Chimborazo may be, it must be written in Peruvian
Chimporazo, as we know that the Peruvians have no _b_.

But what if the name of this giant mountain should have nothing in
common with the language of the Incas, but should have descended from a
more remote antiquity? According to the generally received tradition,
it was not long before the arrival of the Spaniards that the Inca
or Quichua language was introduced into the kingdom of Quito, where
the Puruay language, which has now entirely perished, had previously
prevailed. Other names of mountains, Pichincha, Ilinissa, and Cotopaxi,
have no signification at all in the language of the Incas, and are
therefore certainly older than the introduction of the worship of the
sun and the court language of the rulers of Cuzco. In all parts of the
world the names of mountains and rivers are among the most ancient
and most certain monuments or memorials of languages; and my brother
Wilhelm von Humboldt has employed these names with great sagacity in
his researches on the former diffusion of Iberian nations. A singular
and unexpected statement has been put forward in recent years (Velasco
Historia de Quito, T. i. p. 185) to the effect that “the Incas Tupac
Yupanqui and Huayna Capac were astonished to find at their first
conquest of Quito a dialect of the Quichua language already in use
among the natives.” Prescott, however, appears to regard this statement
as doubtful. (Hist. of the Conquest of Peru, Vol. i. p. 115.)

If the Pass of St. Gothard, Mount Athos, or the Rigi, were placed on
the summit of the Chimborazo, it would form an elevation equal to
that now ascribed to the Dhawalagiri in the Himalaya. The geologist
who rises to more general views connected with the interior of the
earth, regards, not indeed the direction, but the relative height of
the rocky ridges which we term mountain chains, as a phenomenon of so
little import, that he would not be astonished if there should one day
be discovered between the Himalaya and the Altai, summits which should
surpass the Dhawaligiri and the Djawahir as much as these surpass
the Chimborazo. (See my Vues des Cordillères et Monumens des peuples
indigènes de l’Amérique, T. i. p. 116; and my Notice on two attempts
to ascend the Chimborazo, in 1802 and 1831, in Schumacher’s Jahrbuch
for 1847, S. 176.) The great height to which the snow line on the
northern side of the Himalaya is raised _in summer_, by the influence
of the heat returned by radiation from the high plains of the interior
of Asia, renders those mountains, although situated in 29 to 30-1/2
degrees of latitude, as accessible as the Peruvian Andes within the
tropics. Captain Gerard has attained on the Tarhigang an elevation as
great, and perhaps (as is maintained in the Critical Researches on
Philosophy and Geography) 117 English feet greater than that reached by
me on the Chimborazo. Unfortunately, as I have shewn more at large in
another place, these mountain journies beyond the limits of perpetual
snow (however they may engage the curiosity of the public) are of only
very inconsiderable scientific use.

[2] p. 4.--“_The Condor, the giant of the Vulture tribe._”

In my Recueil d’Observations de Zoologie et d’Anatomie comparée,
vol. i. pp. 26-45, I have given the natural history of the Condor,
which, before my journey to the equatorial regions, had been much
misrepresented. (The name of the bird is properly Cuntur in the Inca
language; in Chili, in the Araucan, Mañque; Sarcoramphus Condor of
Duméril.) I made and had engraved a drawing of the head from the living
bird, and of the size of nature. Next to the Condor, the Lämmergeier
of Switzerland, and the Falco destructor of Daudin, probably the Falco
Harpyia of Linnæus, are the largest _flying_ birds.

The region which may be regarded as the ordinary haunt of the Condor
begins at the height of Etna, and comprises atmospheric strata from
ten to eighteen thousand (about 10600 to 19000 English) feet above
the level of the sea. Humming birds, which make summer excursions as
far as 61° N. latitude on the north-west coast of America on the one
hand, and the Tierra del Fuego on the other, have been seen by Von
Tschudi (Fauna Peruana, Ornithol. p. 12) in Puna as high as 13700
(14600 English) feet. There is a pleasure in comparing the largest
and the smallest of the feathered inhabitants of the air. Of the
Condors, the largest individuals found in the chain of the Andes round
Quito measured, with extended wings, 14 (nearly 15 English) feet,
and the smallest 8 (8-1/2 English) feet. From these dimensions, and
from the visual angle at which the bird often appeared vertically
above our heads, we are enabled to infer the enormous height to which
the Condor soars when the sky is serene. A visual angle of 4´, for
example, gives a perpendicular height above the eye of 6876 (7330
English) feet. The cave (Machay) of Antisana, which is opposite the
mountain of Chussulongo, and from whence we measured the height of
the soaring bird, is 14958 (15942 English) feet above the surface
of the Pacific. This would give the absolute height attained by the
Condor at fully 21834 (23270 English) feet; an elevation at which the
barometer would hardly reach 12 French inches, but which yet does
not surpass the highest summits of the Himalaya. It is a remarkable
physiological phenomenon, that the same bird, which can fly round in
circles for hours in regions of an atmosphere so rarified, should
sometimes suddenly descend, as on the western declivity of the Volcano
of Pichincha, to the sea-shore, thus passing rapidly through all
gradations of climate. The membranous air-bags of the Condor, if filled
in the lower regions of the atmosphere, must undergo extraordinary
distension at altitudes of more than 23000 English feet. Ulloa, more
than a century ago, expressed his astonishment that the vulture of
the Andes could soar in regions where the atmospheric pressure is
less than 14 French inches, (Voyage de l’Amérique meridionale, T.
ii. p. 2, 1752; Observations astronomiques et physiques, p. 110). It
was then believed, in analogy with experiments under the air-pump,
that no animal could live in so low a pressure. I have myself, as I
have already noticed, seen the barometer sink on the Chimborazo to
13 French inches 11·2 lines (14.850 English inches). Man, indeed, at
such elevations, if wearied by muscular exertion, finds himself in a
state of very painful exhaustion; but the Condor seems to perform the
functions of respiration with equal facility under pressures of 30 and
13 English inches. It is apparently of all living creatures on our
planet the one which can remove at pleasure to the greatest distance
from the surface of the earth; I say at pleasure, for minute insects
and siliceous-shelled infusoria are carried by the ascending current
to possibly still greater elevations. The Condor probably flies higher
than the altitude found as above by computation. I remember on the
Cotopaxi, in the pumice plain of Suniguaicu, 13578 (14470 English)
feet above the sea, to have seen the bird soaring at a height at which
he appeared only as a small black speck. What is the smallest angle
under which feebly illuminated objects can be discerned? Their form,
(linear extension) has a great influence on the minimum of this angle.
The transparency of the mountain atmosphere at the equator is such
that, in the province of Quito, as I have elsewhere noticed, the white
mantle or Poncho of a horseman was distinguished with the naked eye at
a horizontal distance of 84132 (89665 English) feet; therefore under a
visual angle of 13 seconds. It was my friend Bonpland, whom, from the
pleasant country seat of the Marques de Selvalegre, we saw moving along
the face of a black precipice on the Volcano of Pichincha. Lightning
conductors, being long thin objects, are seen, as has already been
remarked by Arago, from the greatest distances, and under the smallest
angles.

The accounts of the habits of the Condor in the mountainous districts
of Quito and Peru, given by me in a monograph on this powerful bird,
have been confirmed by a later traveller, Gay, who has explored the
whole of Chili, and has described that country in an excellent work
entitled Historia fisica y politica de Chile. The Condor, which, like
the Lamas, Vicunas, Alpacas, and Guanacos, does not extend beyond the
equator into New Granada, is found as far south as the Straits of
Magellan. In Chili, as in the mountain plains of Quito, the Condors,
which at other times live either solitarily or in pairs, assemble in
flocks to attack lambs and calves, or to carry off young Guanacos
(Guanacillos). The ravages annually committed among the herds of sheep,
goats, and cattle, as well as among the wild Vicunas, Alpacas, and
Guanacos of the Andes, are very considerable. The inhabitants of Chili
assert that, in captivity, the Condor can support forty days’ hunger;
when free, his voracity is excessive, and, vulture-like, is directed by
preference to dead flesh.

The mode of capture of Condors in Peru by means of palisades, as
described by me, is practised with equal success in Chili. When the
bird has gorged himself with flesh, he cannot rise into the air without
first running for some little distance with his wings half expanded. A
dead ox, in which decomposition is beginning to take place, is strongly
fenced round, leaving within the fence only a small space, in which
the Condors attracted by the prey are crowded together. When they
have gorged themselves with food, the palisades not permitting them
to obtain a start by running, they become, as remarked above, unable
to rise, and are either killed with clubs by the country people, or
taken alive by the lasso. On the first declaration of the political
independence of Chili, the Condor appeared on the coinage as the
symbol of strength. (Claudio Gay, Historia fisica y politica de Chile,
publicada bajo los auspicios del Supremo Gobierno; Zoologia, pp.
194-198.)

Far more useful than the Condor in the great economy of Nature, in the
removal of putrefying animal substances and in thus purifying the air
in the neighbourhood of human habitations, are the different species
of Gallinazos, of which the number of individuals is much greater. In
tropical America I have sometimes seen as many as 70 or 80 assembled at
once round a dead animal; and I am able, as an eye-witness, to confirm
the fact long since stated, but which has recently been doubted by
ornithologists, of the whole assembly of these birds in such cases
taking flight on the appearance of a single king-vulture, who yet is
no larger than the Gallinazos. No combat ever takes place; but the
Gallinazos (the two species of which, Cathartes urubu and C. aura,
have been confounded with each other by an unfortunately fluctuating
nomenclature) appear to be terrified by the sudden appearance and
courageous demeanour of the richly coloured Sarcoramphus papa. As
the ancient Egyptians protected the bird which rendered them similar
services towards the purification of their atmosphere, so in Peru the
careless or wanton killing of the Gallinazos is punished with a fine,
which in some towns amounts, according to Gay, to 300 piastres for
each bird. It is a remarkable circumstance, stated so long ago as by
Don Felix de Azara, that these species of vultures, if taken young and
reared, will so accustom themselves to the person who feeds them, that
they will follow him on a journey for many miles, flying after the
waggon in which he travels over the Pampas.

[3] p. 4.--“_Their rotating bodies._”

Fontana, in his excellent work “Über das Viperngift,” Bd. i. S. 62,
relates that he succeeded, in the course of two hours, by means of a
drop of water, in bringing to life a rotifera which had lain for two
years and a half dried up and motionless. On the action and effect of
water, see my “Versuche über die gereizte Muskel- und Nervenfaser,” Bd.
ii. S. 250.

What has been called the revivification of Rotiferæ, since observations
have been more exact and have had to undergo stricter criticism, has
been the subject of much animated discussion. Baker affirmed that he
had resuscitated, in 1771, paste-eels which Needham had given him in
1744! Franz Bauer saw his Vibrio tritici, which had been dried up for
four years, move again on being moistened. An extremely careful and
experienced observer, Doyère, in his Mémoire sur les Tardigrades, et
sur leur propriété de revenir à la vie (1842), draws from his own fine
experiments the following conclusions:--Rotiferæ come to life, _i. e._
pass from a motionless state to a state of motion, after having been
exposed to temperatures of 19°.2 Reaumur below, and 36° Reaumur above,
the freezing point; _i. e._ from 11°.2 to 113°.0 Fah. They preserve
the capability of apparent revivification, in _dry sand_, up to 56°.4
R. (158°.9 Fah.); but they lose it, and cannot be excited afresh, if
heated in _moist sand_ to 44° only (131°.0 Fah.) Doyère, p. 119. The
possibility of revivification or reanimation is not prevented by their
being placed for twenty-eight days in barometer tubes in vacuo, or even
by the application of chloride of lime or sulphuric acid (pp. 130-133).
Doyère has also seen the rotiferæ come to life again very slowly after
being dried without sand (desséchés à nu), which Spallanzani had denied
(pp. 117 and 129). “Toute dessiccation faite à la température ordinaire
pourroit souffrir des objections auxquelles l’emploi du vide sec n’eût
peut-être pas complètement repondu: mais en voyant les Tardigrades
périr irrévocablement à une température de 44°, si leurs tissus sont
pénétrés d’eau, tandis que desséchés ils supportent sans périr une
chaleur qu’on peut évaluer a 96° Reaumur, on doit être disposé à
admettre que la revivification n’a dans l’animal d’autre condition
que l’intégrité de composition et de connexions organiques.” In the
same way, in the vegetable kingdom, the sporules of cryptogamia, which
Kunth compares to the propagation of certain phænogamous plants by buds
(bulbillæ), retain their germinating power in the highest temperatures.
According to the most recent experiments of Payen, the sporules of a
minute fungus (Oïdium aurantiacum), which covers the crumb of bread
with a reddish feathery coating, do not lose their power of germination
by being exposed for half an hour in closed tubes to a temperature of
from 67° to 78° Reaumur (182°.75 to 207°.5 Fah.), before being strewed
on fresh perfectly unspoilt dough. May not the newly discovered monad
(Monas prodigiosa), which causes blood-like spots on mealy substances,
have been mingled with this fungus?

Ehrenberg, in his great work on Infusoria (S. 492-496), has given the
most complete history of all the investigations which have taken place
on what is called the revivification of rotiferæ. He believes that, in
spite of all the means of desiccation employed, the organization-fluid
still remains in the apparently dead animal. He contests the hypothesis
of “latent life;” death, he says, is not “life latent, but the want of
life.”

We have evidence of the diminution, if not of the entire disappearance
or suspension of organic functions, in the hybernation or winter sleep
both of warm and cold-blooded animals, in the dormice, marmots, sand
martins (Hirundo riparia) according to Cuvier (Règne animal, 1829, T.
i. p. 396), frogs and toads. Frogs, awakened from winter-sleep by
warmth, can support an eight times’ longer stay under water without
being drowned, than frogs in the breeding season. It would seem as if
the functions of the lungs in respiration, for some time after their
excitability had been suspended, required a less degree of activity.
The circumstance of the sand-martin sometimes burying itself in a
morass is a phenomenon which, while it seems not to admit of doubt, is
the more surprising, as in birds respiration is so extremely energetic,
that, according to Lavoisier’s experiments, two small sparrows, in
their ordinary state, decomposed, in the same space of time, as much
atmospheric air as a porpoise. (Lavoisier, Mémoires de Chimie, T. i. p,
119.) The winter-sleep of the swallow in question (the Hirundo riparia)
is not supposed to belong to the entire species, but only to have been
observed in some individuals. (Milne Edwards, Elémens de Zoologie,
1834, p. 543.)

As in the cold zone the deprivation of heat causes some animals to fall
into winter-sleep, so the hot tropical countries afford an analogous
phænomenon, which has not been sufficiently attended to, and to which
I have applied the name of summer-sleep. (Relation historique, T. ii.
pp. 192 and 626.) Drought and continuous high temperatures act like the
cold of winter in diminishing excitability. In Madagascar, (which, with
the exception of a very small portion at its southern extremity, is
entirely within the tropical zone,) as Bruguière had before observed,
the hedgehog-like Tenrecs (Centenes, Illiger), one species of which (C.
ecaudatus) has been introduced into the Isle of France, sleep during
great heat. Desjardins makes, it is true, the objection that the time
of their slumber is the winter season of the southern hemisphere; but
in a country in which the mean temperature of the coldest month is 3°
Reaumur (6°.75 Fah.) above that of the hottest month in Paris, this
circumstance cannot change the three months’ “summer-sleep” of the
Tenrec in Madagascar and at Port Louis, into what we understand by a
winter-sleep, or state of hybernation.

In the hot and dry season, the crocodile in the Llanos of Venezuela,
the land and water tortoises of the Orinoco, the huge boa, and several
smaller kinds of serpents, become torpid and motionless, and lie
incrusted in the indurated soil. The missionary Gili relates that the
natives, in seeking for the slumbering Terekai (land tortoises), which
they find lying at a depth of sixteen or seventeen inches in dried
mud, are sometimes bitten by serpents which become suddenly aroused,
and which had buried themselves at the same time as the tortoise. An
excellent observer, Dr. Peters, who has just returned from the East
Coast of Africa, writes thus to me on the subject:--“During my short
stay at Madagascar I could obtain no certain information respecting
the Tenrec; but, on the other hand, I know that in the East of
Africa, where I lived for several years, different kinds of tortoises
(Pentonyx and Trionchydias) pass months during the dry season of this
tropical country inclosed in the dry hard earth, and without food. The
Lepidosiren also, in places where the swamps are dried up, remains
coiled up and motionless, encased in indurated earth, from May to
December.”

Thus we find an annual enfeeblement of certain vital functions in
many and very different classes of animals, and, what is particularly
striking, without the same phenomena being presented by other living
creatures nearly allied to them, and belonging to the same family. The
northern glutton (Gulo), though allied to the badger (Meles), does
not like him sleep during the winter; whereas, according to Cuvier’s
remark, “a Myoxus (dormouse) of Senegal (Myoxus coupeii), which could
never have known winter-sleep in his tropical home, being brought
to Europe fell asleep the first year on the setting in of winter.”
This torpidity or enfeeblement of the vital functions and vital
activity passes through several gradations, according as it extends
to the processes of nutrition, respiration, and muscular motion, or
to depression of the activity of the brain and nervous system. The
winter-sleep of the solitary bears and of the badger is not accompanied
by any rigidity, and hence the reawakening of these animals is so
easy, and, as was often related to me in Siberia, so dangerous to the
hunters and country people. The first recognition of the gradation and
connection of these phenomena leads us up to what has been called the
“vita minima” of the microscopic organisms, which, occasionally with
green ovaries and undergoing the process of spontaneous division, fall
from the clouds in the Atlantic sand-rain. The apparent revivification
of rotiferæ, as well as of the siliceous-shelled infusoria, is only the
renewal of long-enfeebled vital functions,--a state of vitality which
was never entirely extinct, and which is fanned into a fresh flame, or
excited anew, by the appropriate stimulus. Physiological phenomena can
only be comprehended by being traced throughout the entire series of
analogous modifications.

[4] p. 5.--“_Winged insects._”

Formerly the fertilization of flowers in which the sexes are separated
was ascribed principally to the action of the wind: it has been
shown by Kölreuter, and with great ingenuity by Sprengel, that bees,
wasps, and a host of smaller winged insects, are the chief agents.
I say the chief agents, because to assert that no fertilization is
possible without the intervention of these little animals appears to
me not to be in conformity with nature, as indeed has been shown in
detail by Willdenow. (Grundriss der Kräuterkunde, 4te Aufl., Berl.
1805, S. 405-412.) On the other hand, Dichogamy, coloured spots or
marks indicating honey-vessels (maculæ indicantes), and fertilization
by insects, are, in much the greater number of cases, inseparably
associated. (Compare Auguste de St. Hilaire, Leçons de Botanique, 1840,
p. 565-571.)

The statement which has been often repeated since Spallanzani, that the
diœcious common hemp (Cannabis sativa) yields perfect seeds without
the neighbourhood of pollen-bearing vessels, has been refuted by later
experiments. When seeds have been obtained, anthers in a rudimentary
state, capable of furnishing some grains of fertilizing dust, have
been discovered near the ovarium. Such hermaphroditism is frequent
in the entire family of Urticeæ, but a peculiar and still unexplained
phenomenon has been presented in the forcing-houses at Kew by a small
New Holland shrub, the Cœlebogyne of Smith. This phænogamous plant
produces in England perfect seeds without trace of male organs, or the
hybridising introduction of the pollen of other species. An ingenious
botanist, Adrien de Jussieu, in his “Cours Elementaire de Botanique,”
1840, p. 463, expresses himself on the subject as follows:--“Un genre
d’Euphorbiacées (?) assez nouvellement décrit mais cultivé depuis
plusieurs années dans les serres d’Angleterre, le Cœlebogyne, y a
plusieurs fois fructifié, et ses graines étaient évidemment parfaites,
puisque non seulement on y a observé un embryon bien constitué, mais
qu’en le semant cet embryon s’est développé en une plante semblable.
Or les fleurs sont dioïques; on ne connait et ne possède pas (en
Angleterre) de pieds mâles, et les recherches les plus minutieuses,
faites par les meilleurs observateurs, n’ont pu jusqu’ici faire
découvrir la moindre trace d’anthères ou seulement de pollen. L’embryon
ne venait donc pas de ce pollen, qui manque entièrement: il a dû se
former de toute pièce dans l’ovule.”

In order to obtain a fresh confirmation or elucidation of this highly
important and isolated phenomenon, I addressed myself not long since
to my young friend Dr. Joseph Hooker, who, after making the Antarctic
voyage with Sir James Ross, has now joined the great Thibeto-Himalayan
expedition. Dr. Hooker wrote to me in reply, on his arrival at
Alexandria near the end of December 1847, before embarking at Suez:
“Our Cœlebogyne still flowers with my father at Kew as well as in the
Gardens of the Horticultural Society. It ripens its seeds regularly: I
have examined it repeatedly very closely and carefully, and have never
been able to discover a penetration of pollen-tubes either in the style
or ovarium. In my herbarium the male blossoms are in small catkins.”

[5] p. 7.--“_Shine like stars._”

The luminosity of the ocean is one of those superb natural phenomena
which continue to excite our admiration even when we have seen them
recur every night for months. The sea is phosphorescent in every zone;
but those who have not witnessed the phenomenon within the tropics, and
especially in the Pacific, have only an imperfect idea of the grand
and majestic spectacle which it affords. When a man-of-war, impelled
by a fresh breeze, cuts the foaming waves, the voyager standing at the
ship’s side feels as if he could never be satisfied with gazing on the
spectacle which presents itself to his view. Every time that in the
rolling of the vessel her side emerges from the water, blue or reddish
streams of light appear to dart upwards like flashes of lightning from
her keel. Nor can I describe the splendour of the appearance presented
on a dark night in the tropic seas by the sports of a troop of
porpoises. As they cut through the foaming waves, following each other
in long winding lines, one sees their mazy track marked by intense
and sparkling light. In the Gulf of Cariaco, between Cumana and the
Peninsula of Maniquarez, I have stood for hours enjoying this spectacle.

Le Gentil and the elder Forster attributed the flashing to the electric
friction excited by the ship in moving through the water, but the
present state of our knowledge does not permit us to receive this as a
valid explanation. (Joh. Reinh. Forster’s Bemerkungen auf seiner Reise
um die Welt, 1783, S. 57; Le Gentil, Voyage dans les Mers de l’Inde,
1779, T. i. p. 685-698.)

Perhaps there are few natural subjects of observation which have been
so long and so much debated as the luminosity of the waters of the
sea. What we know with certainty on the subject may be reduced to the
following simple facts. There are several luminous animals which,
when alive, give out at pleasure a faint phosphoric light: this light
is, in most instances, rather bluish, as in Nereis noctiluca, Medusa
pelagica var. β (Forskäl, Fauna Ægyptiaco-arabica, s. Descriptiones
animalium quæ in itinere orientali observavit, 1775, p. 109), and in
the Monophora noctiluca, discovered in Baudin’s expedition, (Bory de
St.-Vincent, Voyage dans les Iles des Mers d’Afrique, 1804, T. i. p.
107, pl. vi.) The luminous appearance of the sea is due partly to
living animals, such as are spoken of above, and partly to organic
fibres and membranes derived from the destruction of these living
torch-bearers. The first of these causes is undoubtedly the most
usual and most extensive. In proportion as travellers engaged in the
investigation of natural phenomena have become more zealous in their
researches, and more experienced in the use of excellent microscopes,
we have seen in our zoological systems the groups of Mollusca and
Infusoria, which become luminous either at pleasure or when excited by
external stimulus, increase more and more.

The luminosity of the sea, so far as it is produced by living organic
beings, is principally due, in the class of Zoophytes, to the Acalephæ
(the families of Medusa and Cyanea), to some Mollusca, and to a
countless host of Infusoria. Among the small Acalephæ, the Mammaria
scintillans offers the beautiful spectacle of, as it were, the starry
firmament reflected by the surface of the sea. This little creature,
when full grown, hardly equals in size the head of a pin. Michaelis, at
Kiel, was the first to show that there are luminous siliceous-shelled
infusoria: he observed the flashing light of the Peridinium (a ciliated
animalcule), of the cuirassed Monad the Prorocentrum micans, and of
a rotifera to which he gave the name of Synchata baltica. (Michaelis
über das Leuchten der Ostsee bei Kiel, 1830, S. 17.) The same Synchata
baltica was subsequently discovered by Focke in the Lagunes of Venice.
My distinguished friend and Siberian travelling companion, Ehrenberg,
has succeeded in keeping luminous infusoria from the Baltic alive
for almost two months in Berlin. He shewed them to me in 1832 with
a microscope in a drop of sea-water: placed in the dark I saw their
flashes of light. The largest of these little infusoria were 1-8th, and
the smallest from 1-48th to 1-96th of a Paris line in length (a Paris
line is about nine-hundredths of an English inch): after they were
exhausted, and had ceased to send forth sparkles of light, the flashing
was renewed on their being stimulated by the addition of acids or of a
little alcohol to the sea-water.

By repeatedly filtering water taken up fresh from the sea, Ehrenberg
succeeded in obtaining a fluid in which a greater number of these
luminous creatures were concentrated. (Abhandlungen der Akad. der
Wiss. zu Berlin aus dem J. 1833, S. 307; 1834, S. 537-575; 1838,
S. 45 and 258.) This acute observer has found in the organs of the
Photocaris, which emits flashes of light either at pleasure or when
irritated or stimulated, a cellular structure with large cells and
gelatinous interior resembling the electric organs of the Gymnotus and
the Torpedo. “When the Photocaris is irritated, one sees in each cirrus
a kindling and flickering of separate sparks, which gradually increase
in intensity until the whole cirrus is illuminated; until at last the
living fire runs also over the back of the small Nereis-like animal,
so that it appears in the microscope like a thread of sulphur burning
with a greenish-yellow light. It is a circumstance very deserving of
attention, that in the Oceania (Thaumantias) hemisphærica the number
and situation of the sparks correspond exactly with the thickened base
of the larger cirri or organs which alternate with them. The exhibition
of this wreath of fire is a vital act, and the whole development of
light is an organic vital process which in the Infusoria shows itself
as an instantaneous spark of light, and is repeated after short
intervals of repose.” (Ehrenberg über das Leuchten des Meeres, 1836, S.
110, 158, 160, and 163.)

According to these suppositions, the luminous creatures of the ocean
show the existence of a magneto-electric light-evolving process
in other classes of animals than fishes, insects, Mollusca, and
Acalephæ. Is the secretion of the luminous fluid which is effused in
some luminous creatures, and which continues to shine for some time
_without any farther influence of the living animal_ (for example, in
Lampyrides and Elaterides, in the German and Italian glow-worms, and
in the South American Cucuyo which lives on the sugar-cane), only a
consequence of the first electric discharge, or is it simply dependent
on chemical mixture? The shining of insects surrounded by air has
doubtless other physiological causes than those which occasion the
luminosity of inhabitants of the water, fishes, Medusæ, and Infusoria.
The small Infusoria of the ocean, being surrounded by strata of salt
water which is a good conducting fluid, must be capable of an enormous
electric tension of their light-flashing organs to enable them to shine
so intensely in the water. They strike like Torpedos, Gymnoti, and
the Tremola of the Nile, through the stratum of water; while electric
fishes, in connexion with the galvanic circuit, decompose water and
impart magnetism to steel bars, as I showed more than half a century
ago (Versuche über die gereizte Muskel- und Nervenfaser, Bd. i. S.
438-441, and see also Obs. de Zoologie et d’Anatomie comparée, vol.
i. p. 84); and as John Davy has since confirmed (Phil. Trans, for
1834, Part ii. p. 545-547), do not pass a flash through the smallest
intervening stratum.

The considerations which have been developed make it probable that
it is one and the same process which operates in the smallest living
organic creatures, so minute that they are not perceived by the naked
eye,--in the combats of the serpent-like gymnoti,--in flashing luminous
infusoria which raise the phosphorescence of the sea to such a degree
of brilliancy;--as well as in the thunder-cloud, and in the auroral,
terrestrial, or polar light (silent magnetic lightnings), which, as
the result of an increased tension in the interior of the globe, are
announced for hours beforehand by the suddenly altered movements of the
magnetic needle. (See my letter to the Editor of the Annalen der Physik
und Chemie, Bd. xxxvii. 1836, S. 242-244).

Sometimes one cannot even with high magnifying powers discern any
animalcules in the luminous water; and yet, whenever the wave strikes
and breaks in foam against a hard body, a light is seen to flash. In
such case the cause of the phenomenon probably consists in the decaying
animal fibres, which are disseminated in immense abundance throughout
the body of water. If this luminous water is filtered through fine and
closely woven cloths, these little fibres and membranes are separated
in the shape of shining points. When we bathed at Cumana in the waters
of the Gulf of Cariaco, and afterwards lingered awhile on the solitary
beach in the mild evening air without our clothes, parts of our bodies
continued luminous from the shining organic particles which had
adhered to the skin, and the light only became extinct at the end of
some minutes. Considering the enormous quantity of animal life in all
tropical seas, it is, perhaps, not surprising that the sea water should
be luminous, even where no visible organic particles can be detached
from it. From the almost infinite subdivision of the masses of dead
Dagysæ and Medusæ, the sea may perhaps be looked on as a gelatinous
fluid, which as such is luminous, distasteful to, and undrinkable by
man, and capable of affording nourishment to many fish. If one rubs
a board with part of a Medusa hysocella, the part so rubbed regains
its luminosity on friction with a dry finger. On my passage to South
America I sometimes placed a Medusa on a tin plate. When I struck
another metallic substance against the plate, the slightest vibrations
of the tin were sufficient to cause the light. What is the manner in
which in this case the blow and the vibrations act? Is the temperature
momentarily augmented? Are new surfaces exposed? or does the blow press
out a fluid, such as phosphuretted hydrogen, which may burn on coming
into contact with the oxygen of the atmosphere or of the air held in
solution by the sea-water. This light-exciting influence of a shock or
blow is particularly remarkable in a “cross sea,” _i. e._ when waves
coming from opposite directions meet and clash.

I have seen the sea within the tropics appear luminous in the most
different states of weather; but the light was most brilliant
when a storm was near, or with a sultry atmosphere and a vaporous
thickly-clouded sky. Heat and cold appear to have little influence on
the phenomenon, for on the Banks of Newfoundland the phosphorescence
is often very bright during the coldest winter weather. Sometimes
under apparently similar external circumstances the sea will be highly
luminous one night and not at all so the following night. Does the
atmosphere influence the disengagement of light, or do all these
differences depend on the accident of the observer sailing through a
part of the sea more or less abundantly impregnated with gelatinous
animal substances? Perhaps it is only in certain states of the
atmosphere that the light-evolving animalculæ come in large numbers to
the surface of the sea. It has been asked why the fresh water of our
marshes, which is filled with polypi, is never seen to become luminous.
Both in animals and plants, a particular mixture of organic particles
appears to be required in order to favour the production of light.
Willow-wood is oftener found to be luminous than oak-wood. In England
experiments have succeeded in making saltwater shine by pouring into
it the liquor from pickled herrings. It is easy to shew by galvanic
experiments that in living animals the evolution of light depends on
an irritation of the nerves. I have seen an Elater noctilucus which
was dying emit strong flashes of light when I touched the ganglion of
his fore leg with zinc and silver. Medusæ sometimes shew increased
brightness at the moment of completing the galvanic circuit. (Humboldt,
Relat. Hist. T. i. p. 79 and 533.)

Respecting the wonderful development of mass and power of increase in
Infusoria, see Ehrenberg, Infus. S. xiii. 291 and 512. He observes that
“the galaxy of the minutest organisms passes through the genera of
Vibrio and Bacterium and that of Monas, (in the latter they are often
only 1/3000 of a line,)” S. xix. and 244.

[6] p. 7.--“_Which inhabits the large pulmonary cells of the
rattle-snake of the tropics._”

This animal, which I formerly called an Echinorhynchus or even a
Porocephalus, appears on closer investigation, and according to the
better founded judgment of Rudolphi, to belong to the division of
the Pentastomes. (Rudolphi, Entozoorum Synopsis, p. 124 and 434.) It
inhabits the ventral cavities and wide-celled lungs of a species of
Crotalus which lives in Cumana, sometimes in the interior of houses,
where it pursues the mice. Ascaris lumbrici (Gözen’s Eingeweidewürmer,
Tab. iv. Fig. 10,) lives under the skin of the common earthworm, and
is the smallest of all the species of Ascaris. Leucophra nodulata,
Gleichen’s pearl-animalcule, has been observed by Otto Friedrich Müller
in the interior of the reddish Nais littoralis. (Müller, Zoologia
danica, Fasc. II. Tab. lxxx. a--e.) Probably these microscopic animals
are again inhabited by others. All are surrounded by air poor in oxygen
and variously mixed with hydrogen and carbonic acid. Whether any animal
can live in _pure nitrogen_ is very doubtful. It might formerly have
been believed to be the case with Fischer’s Cistidicola farionis,
because according to Fourcroy’s experiments the swimming bladders
of fish appeared to contain an air entirely deprived of oxygen.
Erman’s experience and my own shew, however, that fresh-water fishes
never contain pure nitrogen in their swimming bladders. (Humboldt et
Provençal, sur la respiration des Poissons, in the Recueil d’Observ. de
Zoologie, Vol. ii. p. 194-216.) In sea-fish as much as 0·80 of oxygen
has been found, and according to Biot the purity of the air would
appear to depend on the depth at which the fish live. (Mémoires de
Physique et de Chimie de la Societé d’Arcueil, T. i. 1807, p. 252-281.)

[7] p. 8.--“_The collected labours of united Lithophytes._”

Following Linnæus and Ellis, the calcareous zoophytes,--among which
Madrepores, Meandrinæ, Astreæ, and Pocilloporæ, especially, produce
wall-like coral-reefs,--are inhabited by living creatures which were
long believed to be allied to the Nereids belonging to Cuvier’s
Annelidæ. The anatomy of these gelatinous little creatures has been
elucidated by the ingenious and extensive researches of Cavolini,
Savigny, and Ehrenberg. We have learnt that in order to understand the
entire organization of what are called the rock-building coral animals,
the scaffolding which survives them, _i. e._, the layers of lime, which
in the form of thin delicate plates or lamellæ are elaborated by vital
functions, must not be regarded as something extraneous to the soft
membranes of the food-receiving animal.

Besides the more extended knowledge of the wonderful formation of the
animated coral stocks, there have been gradually established more
accurate views respecting the influence exercised by corals on other
departments of Nature,--on the elevation of groups of low islands
above the level of the sea,--on the migrations of land-plants and the
successive extension of the domains of particular Floras,--and, lastly,
in some parts of the ocean, on the diffusion of races of men, and the
spread of particular languages.

As minute organic creatures living in society, corals do indeed perform
an important part in the general economy of Nature, although they
do not, as was begun to be believed at the time of Cook’s voyages,
enlarge continents and build up islands from fathomless depths of
the ocean. They excite the liveliest interest, whether considered as
subjects of physiology and of the study of the gradation of animal
forms, or whether they are regarded in reference to their influence on
the geography of plants and on the geological relations of the crust
of the Earth. According to the great views of Leopold von Buch, the
whole formation of the Jura consists of “large raised coral-banks of
the ancient world surrounding the ancient mountain chains at a certain
distance.”

In Ehrenberg’s Classification, (Abhandlungen der Akad. der Wiss. zu
Berlin aus dem, J. 1882, S. 393-432) Coral-animals, (often improperly
called, in English works, Coral-insects) are divided into two great
classes: the single-mouthed Anthozoa, which are either free or capable
of detaching themselves, being the animal-corals, Zoocorallia; and
those in which the attachment is permanent and plant-like, being the
Phyto-corals. To the first order, the Zoocorallia, belong the Hydras
or Arm-polypi of Trembley, the Actiniæ decked with beautiful colours,
and the mushroom-corals; to the second order or Phyto-corals belong the
Madrepores, the Astræids, and the Ocellinæ. The Polypi of the second
order are those which, by the cellular wave-defying ramparts which
they construct, are the principal subject of the present note. These
ramparts consist of an aggregate of coral trunks, which, however, do
not instantly lose their common vitality as does a forest tree when cut
down.

Every coral-trunk is a whole which has arisen by a formation of buds
taking place according to certain laws, the parts of which the whole
consists forming a number of organically distinct individuals. In the
group of Phyto-corals these individuals cannot detach themselves at
pleasure, but remain united with each other by thin plates of carbonate
of lime. It is not, therefore, by any means the case that each trunk of
coral has a central point of common vitality or life. (See Ehrenberg’s
Memoir above referred to, S. 419.) The propagation of coral-animals
takes place, in the one order, by eggs or by spontaneous division; and
in the other order, by the formation of buds. It is the latter mode of
propagation which, in the development of individuals, is the most rich
in variety of form.

Coral-reefs, (according to the definition of Dioscorides, sea-plants, a
forest of stone-trees, Lithodendra), are of three kinds;--coast reefs,
called by the English “shore or fringing reefs,” which are immediately
connected with the coasts of continents or islands, as almost all the
coral banks of the Red Sea seen during an eighteen months’ examination
by Ehrenberg and Hemprich;--“barrier-reefs,” “encircling-reefs,” as
the great Australian barrier-reef on the north-east coast of New
Holland, extending from Sandy Cape to the dreaded Torres Strait; and
as the encircling-reefs surrounding the islands of Vanikoro (between
the Santa Cruz group and the New Hebrides) and Poupynete (one of
the Carolinas);--and lastly, coral banks enclosing lagoons, forming
“Atolls” or “Lagoon-islands.” This highly natural division and
nomenclature have been introduced by Charles Darwin, and are intimately
connected with the explanation which that ingenious and excellent
investigator of nature has given of the gradual production of these
wonderful forms. As on the one hand Cavolini, Ehrenberg, and Savigny
have perfected the scientific-anatomical knowledge of the organisation
of coral-animals, so on the other hand the geographical and geological
relations of coral-islands have been investigated and elucidated,
first by Reinhold and George Forster in Cook’s Second Voyage, and
subsequently, after a long interval, by Chamisso, Péron, Quoy and
Gaimard, Flinders, Lütke, Beechey, Darwin, d’Urville, and Lottin.

The coral-animals and their stony cellular structures or scaffolding
belong principally to the warm tropical seas, and the reefs are found
more frequently in the Southern than in the Northern Hemisphere. The
Atolls or Lagoon Islands are crowded together in what has been called
the Coral-Sea, off the north-east coast of New Holland, including New
Caledonia, the Salomon’s Islands, and the Louisiade Archipelago; in
the group of the Low islands (Low Archipelago), eighty in number; in
the Fidji, Ellice, and Gilbert groups; and in the Indian Ocean, on the
north-east of Madagascar, under the name of the Atoll-group of Saya de
Malha.

The great Chagos bank, of which the structure and rocks of dead coral
have been thoroughly examined by Captain Moresby and by Powell, is so
much the more interesting, because we may regard it as a continuation
of the more northerly Laccadives and Maldives. I have already called
attention elsewhere (Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 218), to the importance
of the succession of these Atolls, running exactly in the direction
of a meridian and continued as far as 7° south latitude, to the
general system of mountains and the configuration of the earth’s
surface in Central Asia. They form a kind of continuation to the great
rampart-like mountain elevations of the Ghauts and the more northern
chain of Bolor, to which correspond in the trans-Gangetic Peninsula the
North and South Chains which are intersected near the great bend of the
Thibetian Tzang-bo River by several transverse mountain systems running
east and west. In this eastern peninsula are situated the chains of
Cochin China, Siam, and Malacca which are parallel with each other, as
well as those of Ava and Arracan which all, after courses of unequal
length, terminate in the Gulfs or Bays of Siam, Martaban, and Bengal.
The Bay of Bengal appears like an arrested attempt of nature to form an
inland sea. A deep invasion of the ocean, between the simple western
system of the Ghauts, and the eastern very complex trans-Gangetic
system of mountains, has swallowed up a large portion of the low
lands on the eastern side, but met with an obstacle more difficult to
overcome in the existence of the extensive high plateau of Mysore.

Such an invasion of the ocean has occasioned two almost pyramidal
peninsulas of very different dimensions, and differently proportioned
in breadth and length; and the continuations of two mountain systems
(both running in the direction of the meridian, _i. e._, the mountain
system of Malacca on the east, and the Ghauts of Malabar on the west),
shew themselves in submarine chains of mountains or symmetrical
series of islands, on the one side in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
which are very poor in corals, and on the other side in the three
long-extended groups or series of Atolls of the Laccadives, the
Maldives, and Chagos. The latter series, called by navigators the
Chagos-bank, forms a lagoon encircled by a narrow and already much
broken, and in great measure submerged, coral reef. The longer and
shorter diameters of this lagoon, or its length and breadth, are
respectively 90 and 70 geographical miles. Whilst the enclosed lagoon
is only from seventeen to forty fathoms deep, the depth of water at a
small distance from the outer margin of the coral, (which appears to be
gradually sinking), is such, that at half a mile no bottom was found
in sounding with a line of 190 fathoms, and, at a somewhat greater
distance, none with 210 fathoms. (Darwin, Structure of Coral Reefs, p.
39, 111, and 183.) At the coral lagoon called Keeling-Atoll, Captain
Fitz-Roy, at a distance of only two thousand yards from the reef, found
no soundings with 1200 fathoms.

“The corals which, in the Red Sea, form thick wall-like masses, are
species of Meandrina, Astræa, Favia, Madrepora (Porites), Pocillopora
(hemprichii), Millepora, and Heteropora. The latter are among the most
massive, although they are somewhat branched. The corals which lie
deepest below the surface of the water in this locality, and which,
being magnified by the refraction of the rays of light, appear to the
eye like the domes or cupolas of a cathedral or other large building,
belong, so far as we were enabled to judge, to Meandrina and Astræa.”
(Ehrenberg, manuscript notices.) It is necessary to distinguish between
separate and in part free and detached polypifers, and those which
form wall-like structures and rocks.

If we are struck with the great accumulation of building polypifers
in some regions of the globe, it is not less surprising to remark the
entire absence of their structures in other and often nearly adjoining
regions. These differences must be determined by causes which have not
yet been thoroughly investigated; such as currents, local temperature
of the water, and abundance or deficiency of appropriate food. That
certain thin-branched corals, with less deposit of lime on the side
opposite to the opening of the mouth, prefer the repose of the interior
of the lagoon, is not to be denied; but this preference for the
unagitated water must not, as has too often been done (Annales des
Sciences Naturelles, 1825, T. vi. p. 277), be regarded as a property
belonging to the entire class. According to Ehrenberg’s experience in
the Red Sea, that of Chamisso in the Atolls of the Marshall Islands
east of the Caroline group, the observations of Captain Bird Allen in
the West Indies, and those of Capt. Moresby in the Maldives, living
Madrepores, Millepores, and species of Astræa and of Meandrina,
can support the most violent action of the waves,--“a tremendous
surf,”--(Darwin, Coral Reefs, pp. 63-65), and even appear to prefer the
most stormy exposure. The living organic forces or powers regulating
the cellular structure, which with age acquires the hardness of rock,
resist with wonderful success the mechanical forces acting in the shock
of the agitated water.

In the Pacific, the Galapagos Islands, and the whole Western Coast of
America, are entirely without coral reefs, although so near to the many
Atolls of the Low Islands, and the Archipelago of the Marquesas. This
absence of corals might perhaps be ascribed to the presence of colder
water, since we know that the coasts of Chili and Peru are washed by
a cold current coming from the south and turning to the westward off
Punta Parina, the temperature of which I found, in 1802, to be only
12°.5 Reaumur (60°.2 Fah.), while the undisturbed adjacent masses of
water were from 22° to 23° Reaumur (81°.5 to 83°.8 Fah.); and there are
also among the Galapagos small currents running between the islands,
having a temperature of only 11°.7 Reaumur (58°.2 Fah.) But these lower
temperatures do not extend farther to the north along the shores of the
Pacific, and are not found upon the coasts of Guayaquil, Guatimala,
and Mexico; nor does a low temperature prevail at the Cape de Verd
Islands on the West Coast of Africa, or at the small islands of St.
Paul (St. Paul’s rocks), or at St. Helena, Ascension, or San Fernando
Noronha,--which yet are all without coral reefs.

While this absence of coral reefs appears to characterise the _western_
coasts of Africa, America, and Australia, on the other hand such reefs
abound on the _eastern_ coasts of tropical America, of Africa, on the
coasts of Zanzibar and Australia, and on that of New South Wales. The
coral banks which I have chiefly had opportunities of observing are
those of the interior of the Gulf of Mexico, and those to the south
of the Island of Cuba, in what are called the “Gardens of the King
and Queen” (Jardines y Jardinillos del Rey y de la Reyna). It was
Columbus himself who, on his second voyage, in May 1494, gave that
name to this little group of islands, because the agreeable mixture
of the silver-leaved arborescent Tournefortia gnapholoides, flowering
species of Dolichos, Avicennia nitida, and mangrove hedges, gave to
the coral islands the appearance of a group of floating gardens. “Son
Cayos verdes y graciosos llenos de arboledas,” says the Admiral. On the
passage from Batabano to Trinidad de Cuba, I remained several days in
these gardens, situated to the east of the larger island, called the
Isla de Pinos, which is rich in mahogany trees: my stay was for the
purpose of determining the longitude of the different keys (Cayos). The
Cayo Flamenco, Cayo Bonito, Cayo de Diego Perez, and Cayo de piedras,
are coral islands rising only from eight to fourteen inches above the
level of the sea. The upper edge of the reef does not consist simply
of blocks of dead coral; it is rather a true conglomerate, in which
angular pieces of coral, cemented together with grains of quartz, are
embedded. In the Cayo de piedras I saw such embedded pieces of coral
measuring as much as three cubic feet. Several of the small West
Indian coral islands have fresh water, a phenomenon which, wherever it
presents itself, (for example, at Radak in the Pacific; see Chamisso
in Kotzebue’s Entdeckungs-Reise, Bd. iii. S. 108), is deserving of
examination, as it has sometimes been ascribed to hydrostatic pressure
operating from a distant coast, (as at Venice, and in the Bay of Xagua
east of Batabano), and sometimes to the filtration of rain water. (See
my Essai politique sur l’Ile de Cuba, T. ii. p. 137.)

The living gelatinous investment of the stony calcareous part of the
coral attracts fish, and even turtles, who seek it as food. In the time
of Columbus the now unfrequented locality of the Jardines del Rey was
enlivened by a singular kind of fishery, in which the inhabitants of
the coasts of the Island of Cuba engaged, and in which they availed
themselves of the services of a small fish. They employed in the
capture of turtle the Remora, once said to detain ships (probably the
Echeneis Naucrates), called in Spanish “Reves,” or reversed, because
at first sight his back and abdomen are mistaken for each other. The
remora attaches itself to the turtle by suction through the interstices
of the indented and moveable cartilaginous plates which cover the
head of the latter, and “would rather,” says Columbus, “allow itself
to be cut in pieces than lose its hold.” The natives; therefore,
attach a line, formed of palm fibres, to the tail of the little fish,
and after it has fastened itself to the turtle draw both out of the
water together. Martin Anghiera, the learned secretary of Charles V.,
says, “Nostrates piscem reversum appellant, quod versus venatur. Non
aliter ac nos canibus gallicis per æquora campi lepores insectamur,
illi (incolæ Cubæ insulæ) venatorio pisce pisces alios capiebant.”
(Petr. Martyr, Oceanica, 1532, Dec. I. p. 9; Gomara, Hist. de las
Indias, 1553, fol. xiv.) We learn by Dampier and Commerson that this
piscatorial artifice, the employing a sucking-fish to catch other
inhabitants of the water, is much practised on the East Coast of
Africa, at Cape Natal and on the Mozambique Channel, and also in the
Island of Madagascar. (Lacépède, Hist. nat. des Poissons, T. i. p.
55.) The same necessities combine with a knowledge of the habits of
animals to induce the same artifices and modes of capture among nations
who are entirely unconnected with each other.

Although, as we have already remarked, the zone included between 22
or 24 degrees of latitude on either side of the equator, appears to
be the true region of the calcareous saxigenous lithophytes which
raise wall-like structures, yet coral reefs are also found, favoured
it is supposed by the warm current of the Gulf-stream, in lat. 32°
23´, at the Bermudas, where they have been extremely well described by
Lieutenant Nelson. (Transactions of the Geological Society, 2d Series,
1837, Vol. V. Pt. i. p. 103.) In the southern hemisphere, corals,
(Millepores and Cellepores), are found singly as far south as Chiloe,
the Archipelago of Chonos, and Tierra de Fuego, in 53° lat.; and
Retepores are even found in lat. 72-1/2°.

Since the second voyage of Captain Cook there have been many defenders
of the hypothesis put forward by him as well as by Reinhold and George
Forster, according to which the low coral islands of the Pacific have
been built up by living creatures from the depths of the bottom of
the sea. The distinguished investigators of nature, Quoy and Gaimard,
who accompanied Captain Freycinet in his voyage round the world in
the frigate Uranie, were the first who ventured, in 1823, to express
themselves with great boldness and freedom in opposition to the views
of the two Forsters (father and son), of Flinders, and of Péron.
(Annales des Sciences Naturelles, T. vi., 1825, p. 273.) “En appelant
l’attention des naturalistes sur les animalcules des coraux, nous
espérons démontrer que tout ce qu’on a dit ou cru observer jusqu’à
ce jour relativement aux immenses travaux qu’il sont susceptibles
d’exécuter, est le plus souvent inexact et toujours excessivement
exagéré. Nous pensons que les coraux, loin d’élever des profondeurs
de l’océan des murs perpendiculaires, ne forment que des couches ou
des encroûtemens de quelques toises d’èpaisseur.” Quoy and Gaimard
also propounded (p. 289) the conjecture that the Atolls, (coral walls
enclosing a lagoon), probably owed their origin to submarine volcanic
craters. Their estimate of the depth below the surface of the sea at
which the animals which form the coral reefs (the species of Astræa,
for example) could live, was doubtless too small, being at the utmost
from 25 to 30 feet (26-1/2 to 32 E.) An investigator and lover of
nature who has added to his own many and valuable observations a
comparison with those of others in all parts of the globe, Charles
Darwin, places with greater certainty the depth of the region of
living corals at 20 to 30 fathoms. (Darwin, Journal, 1845, p. 467; and
the same writer’s Structure of Coral Reefs, p. 84-87; and Sir Robert
Schomburgk, Hist. of Barbadoes, 1848, p. 636.) This is also the depth
at which Professor Edward Forbes found the greatest number of corals
in the Egean Sea: it is his “fourth region” of marine animals in his
very ingenious memoir on the “Provinces of Depth” and the geographical
distribution of Mollusca at vertical distances from the surface.
(Report on Ægean Invertebrata in the Report of the 13th Meeting of the
British Association, held at Cork in 1843, pp. 151 and 161.) The depths
at which corals live would seem, however, to be very different in
different species, and especially in the more delicate ones which do
not form such large masses.

Sir James Ross, in his Antarctic Expedition, brought up corals with
the sounding lead from great depths, and entrusted them to Mr. Stokes
and Professor Forbes for more thorough examination. On the west of
Victoria Land, near Coulman Island, in S. lat. 72° 31´, at a depth of
270 fathoms, Retepora cellulosa, a species of Hornera, and Prymnoa
Rossii, were found quite fresh and living. Prymnoa Rossii is very
analogous to a species found on the coast of Norway. (See Ross, Voyage
of Discovery in the Southern and Antarctic Regions, vol. i. pp. 334 and
337.) In a similar manner in the high northern regions the whalers have
brought up Umbellaria grænlandica, living, from depths of 236 fathoms.
(Ehrenberg, in the Abhandl. der Berl. Akad. aus dem J. 1832, S. 430.)
We find similar relations of species and situation among sponges,
which, indeed, are now considered to belong rather to plants than to
zoophytes. On the coasts of Asia Minor the common sponge is found by
those engaged in the fishery at depths varying from 5 to 30 fathoms;
whereas a very small species of the same genus is not found at a less
depth than 180 fathoms. (Forbes and Spratt, Travels in Lycia, 1847,
Vol. ii. p. 124.) It is difficult to divine the reason which prevents
Madrepores, Meandrina, Astræa, and the entire group of tropical
Phyto-corals which raise large cellular calcareous structures, from
living in strata of water at a considerable depth below the surface of
the sea. The diminution of temperature in descending takes place but
slowly; that of light almost equally so; and the existence of numerous
Infusoria at great depths shews that the polypifers would not want for
food.

In opposition to the hitherto generally received opinion of the
entire absence of organic life in the Dead Sea, it is deserving of
notice that my friend and fellow labourer, M. Valenciennes, has
received through the Marquis Charles de l’Escalopier, and also the
French consul Botta, fine specimens of Porites elongata from the
Dead Sea. This fact is the more interesting because this species is
not found in the Mediterranean, but belongs to the Red Sea, which,
according to Valenciennes, has but few organic forms in common with
the Mediterranean. I have before remarked that in France a sea fish, a
species of Pleuronectes, advances far up the rivers into the interior
of the country, thus becoming accustomed to gill-respiration in
fresh water; so we find that the coral-animal above spoken of, the
Porites elongata of Lamarck, has a not less remarkable flexibility of
organisation, since it lives in the Dead Sea, which is over-saturated
with salt, and in the open ocean near the Seychelle Islands. (See my
Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 517.)

According to the most recent chemical analyses made by the younger
Silliman, the genus Porites, as well as many other cellular polypifers,
(Madrepores, Andræas, and Meandrinas of Ceylon and the Bermudas),
contain, besides 92-95 per cent. of carbonate of lime and magnesia,
some fluoric and phosphoric acids. (See p. 124-131 of “Structure and
Classification of Zoophytes,” by James Dana, Geologist of the United
States’ Exploring Expedition, under the command of Captain Wilkes.)
The presence of fluorine in the solid parts of polypifers reminds
us of the fluorate of lime in the bones of fishes, according to the
experiments of Morechini and Gay Lussac at Rome. Silex is only found
mixed in very small quantity with fluorate and phosphate of lime in
coral stocks; but a coral-animal allied to the Horn-coral, Gray’s
Hyalonema, has an axis of pure fibres of silex resembling a queue or
braided tress of hair. Professor Forchhammer, who has been lately
engaged in a thorough analysis of the sea-water from the most different
parts of the globe, finds the quantity of lime in the Caribbean Sea
remarkably small, being only 247 parts in ten thousand, while in
the Categat it amounts to 371 parts in ten thousand. He is disposed
to attribute this difference to the many coral-banks among the West
Indian Islands, which appropriate the lime, and lower the per centage
remaining in the sea-water. (Report of the 16th Meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, held in 1846, p. 91.)

Charles Darwin has developed in a very ingenious manner the probable
genetic connection between fringing or shore-reefs, island-encircling
reefs, and lagoon-islands, _i. e._, narrow ring-shaped reefs enclosing
interior lagoons. According to his views these three varieties of
form are dependent on the oscillating condition of the bottom of the
sea, or on periodic elevations and subsidences. The hypothesis which
has been several times put forward, according to which the closed
ring or annular form of the coral-reefs in Atolls or Lagoon Islands
marks the configuration of a submarine volcano, the structure having
been raised on the margin of the crater, is opposed by their great
dimensions, the diameters of many of them being 30, 40, and sometimes
even 60 geographical miles. Our fire-emitting mountains have no such
craters; and if we would compare the lagoon, with its submerged
interior and narrow enclosing reef, to one of the annular mountains
of the moon, we must not forget that those lunar mountains are not
volcanoes, but wall-surrounded districts. According to Darwin, the
process of formation is the following:--He supposes a mountainous
island surrounded by a coral-reef, (a “fringing reef” attached to the
shore), to undergo subsidence: the “fringing reef” which subsides with
the island is continually restored to its level by the tendency of the
coral-animals to regain the surface of the sea, and becomes thus, as
the island gradually sinks and is reduced in size, first an “encircling
reef” at some distance from the included islet, and subsequently, when
the latter has entirely disappeared, an atoll. According to this view,
in which islands are regarded as the culminating points of a submerged
land, the relative positions of the different coral islands would
disclose to us that which we could hardly learn by the sounding line,
concerning the configuration of the land which was above the surface of
the sea at an earlier epoch. The entire elucidation of this attractive
subject, (to the connection of which with the migrations of plants and
the diffusion of races of men attention was called at the commencement
of the present note), can only be hoped for when inquirers shall have
succeeded in obtaining greater knowledge than is now possessed of the
depth and the nature of the rocks on which the lowest strata of the
dead corals rest.

[8] p. 11.--“_Traditions of Samothrace._”

Diodorus has preserved to us this remarkable tradition, the probability
of which renders it in the eyes of the geologist almost equivalent to
a historical certainty. The Island of Samothrace, formerly called also
Æthiopea, Dardania, Leucania or Leucosia in the Scholiast to Apollonius
Rhodius, and which was a seat of the ancient mysteries of the Cabiri,
was inhabited by the remains of an ancient nation, several words of
whose language were preserved to a later period in the ceremonies
accompanying sacrifices. The situation of this island, opposite to the
Thracian Hebrus and near the Dardanelles, renders it not surprising
that a more detailed tradition of the catastrophe of the breaking forth
of the waters of the Euxine should have been preserved there. Rites
were performed at altars supposed to mark the limits of the irruption
of the waves; and in Samothrace as well as in Bœotia, a belief in the
periodically recurring destruction of mankind, (a belief which was also
found among the Mexicans in the form of a myth of four destructions of
the world), was connected with historical recollections of particular
inundations. (Otfr. Müller Geschichten Hellenischer Stämme und Städte,
Bd. i. S. 65 and 119.) According to Diodorus, the Samothracians related
that the Black Sea had once been an inland lake, but that, being
swollen by the rivers which flow into it, it had broken through, first
the strait of the Bosphorus, and afterwards that of the Hellespont; and
this long before the inundations spoken of by other nations. (Diod.
Sicul. lib. v. cap. 47, p. 369, Wesseling.) These ancient revolutions
of nature have been treated of in a special work by Dureau de la Malle,
and all the information possessed on the subject has been collected in
Carl von Hoff’s important work, entitled Geschichte der natürlichen
Veränderungen der Erdoberfläche, Th. i. 1822, S. 105-162; and in
Creuzer’s Symbolik, 2te Aufl. Th. ii. S. 285, 318, and 361. A reflex,
as it were, of the traditions of Samothrace appears in the “Sluice
theory” of Strato of Lampsacus, according to which the swelling of the
waters of the Euxine first opened the passage of the Dardanelles, and
afterwards caused the outlet through the pillars of Hercules. Strabo
has preserved to us in the first book of his Geography, among critical
extracts from the works of Eratosthenes, a remarkable fragment of the
lost writings of Strato, presenting views which extend to almost the
entire circumference of the Mediterranean.

“Strato of Lampsacus,” says Strabo (Lib. i. p. 49 and 50, Casaub.),
“is even more disposed than the Lydian Xanthus,” (who had described
impressions of shells at a distance from the sea) “to expound the
causes of the things which we see. He asserts that the Euxine had
formerly no outlet at Byzantium, but the sea becoming swollen by the
rivers which ran into it, had by its pressure opened the passage
through which the waters flow into the Propontis and the Hellespont.
He also says that the same thing has happened to our Sea (the
Mediterranean);” “for here, too, when the sea had become swollen by the
rivers, (which in flowing into it had left dry their marshy banks), it
forced for itself a passage through the isthmus of land connecting the
Pillars. The proofs which Strato gives of this are, first that there is
still a bank under water running from Europe to Libya, shewing that the
outer and inner seas were formerly divided; and next that the Euxine
is the shallowest, the Cretan, Sicilian, and Sardoic Seas being on the
contrary very deep; the reason being that the Euxine has been filled
with mud by the many and large rivers flowing into it from the North,
while the other seas continued deep. The Euxine is also the freshest,
and the waters flow towards the parts where the bottom of the sea is
lowest. Hence he inferred that the whole of the Euxine would finally
be choked with mud if the rivers were to continue to flow into it: and
this is already in some degree the case on the west side of the Euxine
towards Salmydessus (the Thracian Apollonia), and at what are called
by mariners the “Breasts” off the mouth of the Ister and along the
shore of the Scythian Desert. Perhaps the Temple of Ammon (in Lybia)
may once have stood on the sea-shore, and causes such as these may
explain why it is now far inland. This Strato thought might account
for the celebrity of the Oracle, which would be less surprising if it
had been on the sea-shore; whereas its great distance from the coast
made its present renown inexplicable. Egypt, too, had been formerly
overflowed by the sea as far as the marshes of Pelusium, Mount Casius,
and Lake Serbonis; for, on digging beneath the surface, beds of
sea-sand and shells are found; shewing that the country was formerly
overflowed, and the whole district round Mount Casius and Gerrha was
a marshy sea which joined the gulf of the Red Sea. When our Sea (the
Mediterranean) retreated, the land was uncovered; still, however,
leaving the Lake of Serbonis: subsequently this lake also broke through
its bounds and the water flowed off, so that the lake became a swamp.
The banks of Lake Mœris are also more like sea than river banks.” An
erroneously corrected reading introduced by Grosskurd on account of
a passage in Strabo, Lib. xvii. p. 809, Cas., gives instead of Mœris
“the Lake Halmyris:” but this latter lake was situated not far from the
mouth of the Danube.

The sluice-theory of Strato led Eratosthenes of Cyrene (the most
celebrated of the series of librarians of Alexandria, but less
happy than Archimedes in writing on floating bodies), to examine
the problem of the equality of level of all external seas, _i. e._,
seas surrounding the Continents. (Strabo, Lib. i. p. 51-56; Lib. ii.
p. 104, Casaub). The varied outlines of the northern shores of the
Mediterranean, and the articulated form of the peninsulas and islands,
had given occasion to the geognostical myth of the ancient land of
Lyctonia. The supposed mode of origin of the smaller Syrtis and of the
Triton Lake (Diod. iii. 53-55) as well as that of the whole Western
Atlas (Maximus Tyrius, viii. 7) were drawn in to form part of an
imaginary scheme of igneous eruptions and earthquakes. (See my Examen
crit. de l’hist. de la Géographie, Vol. i. p. 179; T. iii. p. 136.) I
have recently touched more in detail on this subject (Kosmos, Bd. ii.
S. 153; Engl. ed. p. 118-119) in a passage which I permit myself to
subjoin:--

A more richly varied and broken outline gives to the northern shore
of the Mediterranean an advantage over the southern or Lybian shore,
which according to Strabo was remarked by Eratosthenes. The three great
peninsulas, the Iberian, the Italian, and the Hellenic, with their
sinuous and deeply indented shores, form, in combination with the
neighbouring islands and opposite coasts, many straits and isthmuses.
The configuration of the continent and the islands, the latter either
severed from the main or volcanically elevated in lines, as if over
long fissures, early led to geognostical views respecting eruptions,
terrestrial revolutions, and overpourings of the swollen higher seas
into those which were lower. The Euxine, the Dardanelles, the Straits
of Gades, and the Mediterranean with its many islands, were well fitted
to give rise to the view of such a system of sluices. The Orphic
Argonaut, who probably wrote in Christian times, wove antique legends
into his song; he describes the breaking up of the ancient Lyktonia
into several islands, when ‘the dark-haired Poseidon, being wroth
with Father Kronion, smote Lyktonia with the golden trident.’ Similar
phantasies, which indeed may often have arisen from imperfect knowledge
of geographical circumstances, proceeded from the Alexandrian school,
where erudition abounded, and a strong predilection was felt for
antique legends. It is not necessary to determine here whether the myth
of the Atlantis broken into fragments should be regarded as a distant
and western reflex of that of Lyktonia (as I think I have elsewhere
shewn to be probable), or whether, as Otfried Müller considers,
“the destruction of Lyktonia (Leuconia) refers to the Samothracian
tradition of a great flood which had changed the form of that district.”

[9] p. 12.--“_Prevents precipitation taking place from clouds._”

The vertically-ascending current of the atmosphere is a principal
cause of many most important meteorological phenomena. When a desert
or a sandy plain partly or entirely destitute of plants is bounded
by a chain of high mountains, we see the sea breeze drive the dense
clouds over the desert without any precipitation taking place before
they have reached the mountain-ridge. This phenomenon was formerly
explained in a very inappropriate manner by a supposed superior
attraction exercised by the mountains on the clouds. The true reason
of the phenomenon appears to consist in the ascending column of warm
air which rises from the sandy plain, and prevents the vesicles
of vapour from being dissolved. The more complete the absence of
vegetation, and the more the sand is heated, the greater is the height
of the clouds, and the less can any fall of rain take place. When the
clouds reach the mountains these causes cease to operate; the play of
the vertically-ascending atmospheric current is feebler, the clouds
sink lower, and dissolve in rain in a cooler stratum of air. Thus,
in deserts, the _want of rain_, and the _absence of vegetation_, act
and react upon each other. It does not rain, because the naked sandy
surface having no vegetable covering, becomes more powerfully heated by
the solar rays, and thus radiates more heat; and the absence of rain
forbids the desert being converted into a steppe or grassy plain,
because without water no organic development is possible.

[10] p. 14.--“_The mass of the earth in solidifying and parting with
its heat._”

If, according to the hypothesis of the Neptunists, now long since
obsolete, the so-called primitive rocks were precipitated from a fluid,
the transition of the crust of the earth from a fluid to a solid state
must have been accompanied by an enormous disengagement of heat, which
would in turn have caused fresh evaporation and fresh precipitations.
The later these precipitations, the more rapid, tumultuous, and
uncrystalline they would have been. Such a sudden disengagement of heat
_might_ cause local augmentations of temperature independent of the
height of the pole or the latitude of the place, and independent of the
position of the earth’s axis; and the temperatures thus caused would
influence the distribution of plants. The same sudden disengagement of
heat might also occasion a species of porosity, of which there seem to
be indications in many enigmatical geological phenomena in sedimentary
rocks. I have developed these conjectures in detail in a small memoir
“über ursprungliche Porosität.” (See my work entitled Versuche über
die chemische Zersetzung des Luftkreises, 1799, S. 177; and Moll’s
Jahrbücher der Berg- und Hüttenkunde, 1797, S. 234.) According to the
newer views which I now entertain, the shattered and fissured earth,
with her molten interior, may long have maintained a high temperature
on her oxydised surface, independently of position in respect to the
sun and of latitude. Would not the climate of Germany be wonderfully
altered, and that perhaps for centuries, if there were opened a fissure
a thousand fathoms in depth, reaching from the shores of the Adriatic
to the Baltic? If in the present condition of our planet, the stable
equilibrium of temperature, first calculated by Fourier in his Théorie
analytique de la chaleur, has been almost completely restored by
radiation from the earth into space; and if the external atmosphere now
only communicates with the molten interior through the inconsiderable
openings of a few volcanoes,--in the earlier state of things numerous
clefts and fissures, produced by the frequently recurring corrugations
of the rocky strata of the globe, emitted streams of heated air which
mingled with the atmosphere and were entirely independent of latitude.
Every planet must thus in its earliest condition have for a time
determined its own temperature, which afterwards becomes dependent on
the position relatively to the central body, the Sun. The surface of
the Moon also shows traces of this reaction of the interior upon the
crust.

[11] p. 14.--“_The mountain declivities of the southern part of
Mexico._”

The greenstone in globular concretions of the mountain district of
Guanaxuato is quite similar to that of the Franconian Fichtel-Gebirge.
Both form grotesquely shaped summits, which pierce through and cover
the transition argillaceous schists. In the same manner, pearl stone,
porphyritic schists, trachyte, and pitch-stone porphyry, constitute
rocks similar in form in the Mexican mountains near Cinapecuaro and
Moran, in Hungary, in Bohemia, and in Northern Asia.

[12] p. 16.--“_The dragon-tree of Orotava._”

This colossal dragon-tree, Dracæna draco, stands in the garden of Dr.
Franqui in the small town of Oratava, the ancient Taoro, one of the
most delightful spots in the world. In June 1799, when we ascended the
Peak of Teneriffe, we measured the circumference of the tree, and found
it nearly 48 English feet. Our measurement was taken several feet above
the root. Lower down, and nearer to the ground, Le Dru made it nearly
79 English feet. Sir George Staunton found the diameter still as much
as 12 feet at the height of 10 feet above the ground. The height of
the tree is not much above 69 English feet. According to tradition,
this tree was venerated by the Guanches (as was the ash-tree of Ephesus
by the Greeks, or as the Lydian plane-tree which Xerxes decked with
ornaments, and the sacred Banyan-tree of Ceylon), and at the time of
the first expedition of the Béthencourts in 1402, it was already as
thick and as hollow as it now is. Remembering that the Dracæna grows
extremely slowly, we are led to infer the high antiquity of the tree
of Orotava. Bertholet, in his description of Teneriffe, says, “En
comparant les jeunes Dragonniers, voisins de l’arbre gigantesque, les
calculs qu’on fait sur l’age de ce dernier effraient l’imagination.”
(Nova Acta Acad. Leop. Carol. Naturæ Curiosorum, T. xiii. 1827, p.
781.) The dragon-tree has been cultivated in the Canaries, and in
Madeira and Porto Santo, from the earliest times; and an accurate
observer, Leopold von Buch, has even found it wild in Teneriffe, near
Igueste. Its original country, therefore, is not India, as had long
been believed; nor does its appearance in the Canaries contradict the
opinion of those who regard the Guanches as having been an isolated
Atlantic nation without intercourse with African or Asiatic nations.
The form of the Dracænas is repeated at the southern extremity of
Africa, in the Isle of Bourbon, and in New Zealand. In all these
distant regions species of the genus in question are found, but none
have been met with in the New Continent, where its form is replaced by
that of the Yucca. Dracæna borealis of Aiton is a true Convallaria,
and has all the “habitus” of that genus. (Humboldt, Rel. hist. T. i.
p. 118 and 639.) I have given a representation of the dragon-tree of
Orotava, taken from a drawing made by F. d’Ozonne in 1776, in the
last plate of the Picturesque Atlas of my American journey. (Vues
des Cordillères et Monumens des Peuples indigènes de l’Amérique, Pl.
lxix.) I found d’Ozonne’s drawing among the manuscripts left by the
celebrated Borda, in the still unprinted travelling journal entrusted
to me by the Dépôt de la Marine, and from which I borrowed important
astronomically-determined geographical, as well as barometric and
trigonometric notices. (Rel. hist. T. i. p. 282.) The measurement of
the dragon-tree of the Villa Franqui was made on Borda’s first voyage
with Pingré, in 1771; not in his second voyage, in 1776, with Varela.
It is affirmed that in the early times of the Norman and Spanish
Conquests, in the 15th century, Mass was said at a small altar erected
in the hollow trunk of the tree. Unfortunately the dragon-tree of
Orotava lost one side of its top in the storm of the 21st of July,
1819. There is a fine and large English copperplate engraving which
represents the present state of the tree with remarkable truth to
nature.

The monumental character of these colossal living vegetable forms,
and the kind of reverence which has been felt for them among all
nations, have occasioned in modern times the bestowal of greater
care in the numerical determination of their age and the size of
their trunks. The results of these inquiries have led the author
of the important treatise, “De la longévité des Arbres,” the elder
Decandolle, Endlicher, Unger, and other able botanists, to consider
it not improbable that the age of several individual trees which are
still alive goes back to the earliest historical periods, if not of
Egypt, at least of Greece and Italy. It is said in the Bibliothèque
Universelle de Genève, 1831, T. lxvii. p. 50:--“Plusieurs exemples
semblent confirmer l’idée qu’il existe encore sur le globe des arbres
d’une antiquité prodigieuse, et peut-être témoins de ses dernières
révolutions physiques. Lorsqu’on regarde un arbre comme un agrégat
d’autant d’individus soudés ensemble qu’il s’est développé de bourgeons
à sa surface, on ne peut pas s’étonner si, de nouveaux bourgeons
s’ajoutant sans cesse aux anciens, l’agrégat qui en résulte n’a point
de terme nécessaire à son existence.” In the same manner Agardh
says:--“If in trees there are produced in each solar year new parts,
so that the older hardened parts are replaced by new ones capable of
conducting sap, we see herein a type of growth limited only by external
causes.” He ascribes the shortness of the life of herbs, or of such
plants as are not trees, “to the preponderance of the production of
flowers and fruit over the formation of leaves.” Unfruitfulness is to
a plant a prolongation of life. Endlicher cites the example of a plant
of Medicago sativa, var. β versicolor, which, bearing no fruit, lived
eighty years. (Grundzüge der Botanik, 1843, S. 1003).

With the dragon trees, which, notwithstanding the gigantic development
of their closed vascular bundles, must by reason of their floral parts
be placed in the same natural family with asparagus and garden onions,
we must associate the Adansonia (monkey bread-tree, Baobab,) as being
certainly among the largest and oldest inhabitants of our planet. In
the very first voyages of discovery of the Catalans and Portuguese, the
navigators were accustomed to cut their names on these two species of
trees, not merely to gratify the desire of handing down their names,
but also to serve as marks or signs of possession, and of whatever
rights nations claim on the ground of being the first discoverers.
The Portuguese navigators often used as their “marco” or token of
possession the French motto of the Infant Don Henrique the Discoverer.
Manuel de Faria y Sousa says in his Asia Portuguesa (T. i. cap. 2, pp.
14 and 18):--“Era uso de los primeros Navegantes de dexar inscrito
el Motto del Infante, _talent de bien faire_, en la corteza de los
arboles.” (Compare also Barros, Asia, Dec. I. liv. ii. cap. 2, T. i. p.
148; Lisboa, 1778.)

The above-named motto cut on the bark of two trees by Portuguese
navigators in 1435, twenty-eight years therefore before the death of
the Infante, is curiously connected in the history of discoveries with
the elucidations to which the comparison of Vespucci’s fourth voyage
with that of Gonzalo Coelho, in 1503, has given rise. Vespucci relates
that Coelho’s admiral’s ship was wrecked on an island which has been
sometimes supposed to be San Fernando Noronha, sometimes the Peñedo
de San Pedro, and sometimes the problematical Island of St. Matthew.
This last-named island was discovered by Garcia Jofre de Loaysa on
the 15th of October, 1525, in 2-1/2° S. lat., in the meridian of Cape
Palmas, almost in the Gulf of Guinea. He remained there eighteen days
at anchor, found crosses, as well as orange trees which had been
planted and had become wild, and on two trunks of trees inscriptions
dating back ninety years. (Navarrete, T. v. pp. 8, 247, and 401.) I
have examined the questions presented by this account more in detail
in my inquiries into the trustworthiness of Amerigo Vespucci. (Examen
critique de l’hist. de la Geographie, T. v. pp. 129-132.)

The oldest description of the Baobab (Adansonia digitata), is that
given by the Venetian Aloysius Cadamosto (the real name was Alvise da
Ca da Mosto), in 1454. He found at the mouth of the Senegal, trunks
of which he estimated the circumference at seventeen fathoms, or 102
feet, (Ramusio, Vol. i. p. 109): he might have compared them with
Dragon trees which he had seen before. Perrottet says in his “Flore de
Sénégambie” (p. 76), that he had seen monkey bread-trees which, with
a height of only about 70 or 80 feet, had a diameter of 32 English
feet. The same dimensions had been given by Adanson, in the account
of his voyage in 1748; the largest trunks which he himself saw (in
1749) in one of the small Magdalena islands near Cape de Verd, and
in the vicinity of the mouth of the Senegal River, were from 26 to
28-1/2 English feet in diameter, with a height of little more than 70
feet, and a top about 180 feet broad; but he adds at the same time,
that other travellers had found trunks of nearly 32 English feet
diameter. French and Dutch sailors had cut their names on the trees
seen by Adanson in letters half a foot long; the dates added to the
names shewed these inscriptions to be all of the 16th century, except
one which belonged to the 15th. (In Adanson’s “Familles des Plantes,”
1763, P. I. pp. ccxv.-ccxviii., it stands as the 14th century, but
this is doubtless an error of inadvertence.) From the depth of the
inscriptions, which were covered with new layers of wood, and from the
comparison of the thickness of different trunks of the same species
in which the relative age of the trees was known, Adanson computed
the probable age of the larger trees, and found for a diameter of 32
English feet 5150 years. (Voyage au Sènegal, 1757, p. 66.) He prudently
adds (I do not alter his curious orthography):--“Le calcul de l’aje
de chake couche n’a pas d’exactitude géometrike.” In the village of
Grand Galarques, also in Senegambia, the negroes have ornamented the
entrance of a hollow Baobab tree with sculptures cut out of the still
fresh wood; the interior serves for holding meetings in which their
interests are debated. Such a hall of assembly reminds one of the
hollow or cave (specus) of the plane tree in Lycia, in which Lucinius
Mutianus, who had previously been consul, feasted with twenty-one
guests. Plino (xii. 8) assigns to such a cavity in a hollow tree
the somewhat large allowance of a breadth of eighty Roman feet. The
Baobab was seen by Réné Caillié in the Valley of the Niger near Jenne,
by Caillaud in Nubia, and by Wilhelm Peters along the whole eastern
coast of Africa (where it is called Mulapa, _i. e._ Nlapa-tree, more
properly Muti-nlapa) as far as Lourenzo Marques, almost to 26° of S.
lat. Although Cadamosto said in the 15th century “eminentia non quadrat
magnitudini,” and although Golberry (Fragmens d’un Voyage en Afrique,
T. ii. p. 92) found in the “Vallée des deux Gagnacks” trunks which,
with 36 English feet diameter near the roots, were only 64 English feet
high, yet this great disproportion between height and thickness must
not be regarded as general. The learned traveller Peters remarks that
“very old trees lose height by the gradual decay of the top, while they
continue to increase in girth. On the East Coast of Africa one sees
not unfrequently trunks of little more than ten feet diameter reach a
height of 69 English feet.”

If, according to what has been said, the bold estimations of Adanson
and Perottet assign to the Adansonias measured by them an age of from
5150 to 6000 years, which would make them contemporaneous with the
epoch of the building of the Pyramids or even with that of Menes, a
period when the constellation of the Southern Cross was still visible
in Northern Germany (Kosmos, Bd. iii. S. 402 and 487; Eng. ed. p. 293,
and note 146), on the other hand, the more secure estimations made
from the annual rings of trees in our northern temperate zone, and
from the ratio which has been found to subsist between the thickness
of the layer of wood and the time of growth, give us shorter periods.
Decandolle finds as the result of his inquiries, that of all European
species of trees the yew is that which attains the greatest age. He
assigns to the yew (Taxus baccata) of Braborne, in the county of Kent,
thirty centuries; to the Scotch yew of Fortingal, from twenty-five
to twenty-six; and to those of Crowhurst in Surrey, and Ripon in
Yorkshire, respectively, fourteen and a half and twelve centuries.
(Decandolle, de la longévité des arbres, p. 65.) Endlicher remarks
that the age of another yew tree, in the Churchyard of Grasford, in
North Wales, which measures 52 English feet in circumference below the
branches, is estimated at 1400 years, and that of a yew in Derbyshire
at 2096 years. In Lithuania lime trees have been cut down which were 87
English feet in circumference, and in which 815 annual rings have been
counted. (Endlicher, Grundzüge der Botanik, S. 399.) In the temperate
zone of the southern hemisphere some species of Eucalyptus attain an
enormous girth, and as they also reach to a great stature (above 230
Paris, 245 English, feet), they are singularly contrasted with our yew
trees, whose great dimension is in thickness only. Mr. Backhouse found
in Emu Bay, on the coast of Van Diemen Land, trunks of Eucalyptus which
measured 70 English feet round the trunk near the ground, and five feet
higher up 50 English feet. (Gould, Birds of Australia, Vol. I. Introd.
p. xv.)

It is not, as is commonly stated, Malpighi, but the ingenious Michel
Montaigne, who has the merit of having been the first, in 1581, in his
Voyage en Italie, to notice the relation of the annual rings to the age
of the tree. (Adrien de Jussieu, Cours élémentaire de Botanique, 1840,
p. 61.) A skilful artist, engaged in the preparation of astronomical
instruments, had called the attention of Montaigne to the annual
rings; and he also maintained that the rings were narrower on the north
side of the tree. Jean Jacques Rousseau had the same belief; and his
Emile, if he loses himself in a forest, is to direct himself by the
indications afforded by the relative thickness of the layers of wood.
More recent observations on the anatomy of plants teach us, however,
that both the acceleration and also the retardation or intermission
of growth, or the varying production of circles of ligneous fascicles
(annual deposits) from the Cambium cells, depend on influences which
are wholly distinct from the quarter of the heavens towards which one
side of the annual rings is turned. (Kunth, Lehrbuch der Botanik, 1847,
T. i. S. 146 and 164; Lindley, Introduction to Botany, 2d edition, p.
75.)

Trees which in individual cases attain a diameter of more than twenty
feet, and an age extending to many centuries, belong to the most
different natural families. I may name here Baobabs, Dragon-trees, some
species of Eucalyptus, Taxodium disticum (Rich.), Pinus Lambertiana
(Douglas), Hymenæa courbaril, Cæsalpinieæ, Bombax, Swietenia mahagoni,
the Banyan tree (Ficus religiosa), Liriodendron tulipifera? Platanus
orientalis, and our Limes, Oaks, and Yews. The celebrated Taxodium
distichon, the Ahuahuete of the Mexicans, (Cupressus disticha Linn.,
Schubertia disticha Mirbel); at Santa Maria del Tule, in the state
of Oaxaca, has not a diameter of 57, as Decandolle says, but of
exactly 38 French (40-1/2 English) feet. (Mühlenpfordt, Versuch einer
getreuen Schilderung der Republik Mexico, Bd. i. S. 153.) The two fine
Ahuahuetes near Chapoltepec, which I have often seen, and which are
probably the surviving remnants of an ancient garden or pleasure-ground
of Montezuma, measure, (according to Burkart’s account of his travels,
Bd. i. S. 268, a work which otherwise contains much information),
only 36 and 38 English feet in circumference; not in diameter, as has
often been erroneously asserted. The Buddhists in Ceylon venerate the
gigantic trunk of the sacred fig-tree of Anourahdepoura. The Indian
fig-tree or Banyan, of which the branches take root round the parent
stem, forming, as Onesicritus well described, a leafy canopy resembling
a many-pillared tent, often attain a thickness of 28 (29-1/2 English)
feet diameter. (Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, Bd. i. S. 260.) On
the Bombax ceiba, see early notices of the time of Columbus, in Bembo’s
Historiæ Venetæ, 1551, fol. 83.

Among oak-trees, of those which have been accurately measured, the
largest in Europe is no doubt that near the town of Saintes, in the
Departement de la Charente Inférieure, on the road to Cozes. This
tree, which is 60 (64 English) feet high, has a diameter of 27 feet
8-1/2 inches (29-1/2 English feet) near the ground; 21-1/2 (almost 23
English) feet five feet higher up; and where the great boughs commence
6 Parisian feet (6 feet 5 inches English.) In the dead part of the
trunk a little chamber has been arranged, from 10 feet 8 inches to 12
feet 9 inches wide, and 9 feet 8 inches high (all English measure),
with a semi-circular bench cut out of the fresh wood. A window gives
light to the interior, so that the sides of the chamber (which is
closed with a door) are clothed with ferns and lichens, giving it a
pleasing appearance. Judging by the size of a small piece of wood which
has been cut out above the door, and in which the marks of 200 annular
rings have been counted, the oak of Saintes would be between 1800 and
2000 years old. (Annales de la Société d’Agriculture de la Rochelle,
1843, p. 380.)

In the wild rose-tree of the crypt of the Cathedral of Hildesheim, said
to be a thousand years old, it is the root only, and not the stem,
which is eight centuries old, according to accurate information derived
from ancient and trustworthy original documents, for the knowledge of
which I am indebted to the kindness of Stadtgerichts-Assessor Römer. A
legend connects the rose-tree with a vow made by the first founder of
the cathedral, Ludwig the Pious; and an original document of the 11th
century says, “that when Bishop Hezilo rebuilt the cathedral which
had been burnt down, he enclosed the roots of the rose-tree with a
vault which still exists, raised upon this vault the crypt, which was
re-consecrated in 1061, and spread out the branches of the rose-tree
upon the walls.” The stem now living is 26-1/2 feet high and about two
inches thick, and the outspread branches cover about 32 feet of the
external wall of the eastern crypt; it is doubtless of considerable
antiquity, and well deserving of the celebrity which it has gained
throughout Germany.

If extraordinary development in point of size is to be regarded as
a proof of long continued organic life, particular attention is due
to one of the thalassophytes of the sub-marine vegetable world, _i.
e._, to the Fucus giganteus, or Macrocystis pyrifera of Agardh.
According to Captain Cook and George Forster, this sea-plant attains
a length of 360 English feet; surpassing, therefore, the height of
the loftiest Coniferæ, even that of the Sequoia gigantea, Endl., or
Taxodium sempervirens, Hook and Arnott, which grows in California.
(Darwin, Journal of Researches into Natural History, 1845, p. 239;
and Captain Fitz-Roy in the Narrative of the Voyages of the Adventure
and Beagle, vol. ii. p. 363.) Macrocystis pyrifera is found from 64°
south to 45° north latitude, as far as San Francisco on the north-west
coast of America; and Joseph Hooker believes it to extend as far as
Kamtschatka. In the Antarctic seas it is even seen floating among the
pack-ice. (Joseph Hooker, Botany of the Antarctic Voyage under the
command of Sir James Ross, 1844, pp. 7, 1, and 178; Camille Montagne,
Botanique cryptogame du Voyage de la Bonite, 1846, p. 36.) The immense
length to which the bands or ribbands and the cords or lines of the
cellular tissue of the Macrocystis attain, appears to be limited only
by accidental injuries.

[13] p. 17.--“_Species of phænogamous plants already contained in
herbariums._”

We must carefully distinguish between three different questions:
How many species of plants are described in printed works? how many
have been discovered, _i. e._ are contained in herbariums, though
without being described? how many are probably existing on the
globe? Murray’s edition of the Linnean system contains, including
cryptogamia, only 10042 species. Willdenow, in his edition of the
Species Plantarum, between the years 1797 and 1807, had already
described 17457 phænogamous species, (from Monandria to Polygamia
diœcia.) If we add 3000 cryptogamous species, we obtain the number
which Willdenow mentions, viz. 20000 species. More recent researches
have shown how much this estimation of the number of species described
and contained in herbariums falls short of the truth. Robert Brown
counted above 37000 phænogamous plants. (General Remarks on the
Botany of Terra Australis, p. 4.) I afterwards attempted to give the
geographical distribution (in different parts of the earth already
explored), of 44000 phænogamous and cryptogamous plants. (Humboldt,
de distributione geographica Plantarum, p. 23.) Decandolle found,
in comparing Persoon’s Enchiridium with his Universal System in
12 several families, that the writings of botanists and European
herbariums taken together might be assumed to contain upwards of
56000 species of plants. (Essai élementaire de Géographie botanique,
p. 62.) If we consider how many species have since that period been
described by travellers,--(my expedition alone furnished 3600 of the
5800 collected species of the equinoctial zone),--and if we remember
that in all the botanical gardens taken together there are certainly
above 25000 phænogamous plants cultivated, we shall easily perceive
how much Decandolle’s number falls short of the truth. Completely
unacquainted as we still are with the larger portions of the interior
of South America,--(Mato-Grosso, Paraguay, the eastern declivity of
the Andes, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and all the countries between
the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, the Amazons, and Puruz),--of Africa,
Madagascar, Borneo, and Central and Eastern Asia,--the thought rises
involuntarily in the mind that we may not yet know the third, or
probably even the fifth part of the plants existing on the earth!
Drège has collected 7092 species of phænogamous plants in South Africa
alone. (See Meyer’s pflanzen geographische Documente, S. 5 and 12.) He
believes that the Flora of that district consists of more than 11000
phænogamous species, while on a surface of equal area (12000 German,
or 192000 English square geographical miles) von Koch has described
in Germany or Switzerland 3300, and Decandolle in France 3645 species
of phænogamous plants. I would also recall that even now new Genera,
(some even consisting of tall forest trees), are being discovered in
the small West Indian Islands which have been visited by Europeans
for three centuries, and in the vicinity of large commercial towns.
These considerations, which I propose to develop in further detail
at the close of the present annotation, make it probable that the
actual number of species exceeds that spoken of in the old myth of the
Zend-Avesta, which says that “the Primeval Creating Power called forth
from the blood of the sacred bull 120000 different forms of plants!”

If, then, we cannot look for any direct scientific solution of the
question of how many forms of the vegetable kingdom,--including
leafless Cryptogamia (water Algæ, funguses, and lichens), Characeæ,
liver-worts, mosses, Marsilaceæ, Lycopodiaceæ, and ferns,--exist on
the dry land and in the ocean in the present state of the organic
life of our globe, we may yet attempt an approximate method by which
we may find some probable “lowest limits” or numerical minima. Since
1815, I have sought, in arithmetical considerations relating to the
geography of plants, to examine first the ratios which the number
of species in the different natural families bear to the entire
mass of the phænogamous vegetation in countries where the latter is
sufficiently well known. Robert Brown, the greatest botanist among our
cotemporaries, had previously determined the numerical proportions
of the leading divisions of the vegetable kingdom; of Acotyledons
(Agamæ, Cryptogamic or cellular plants) to Cotyledons (Phanerogamic
or vascular plants), and of Monocotyledonous (Endogenous) to
Dicotyledonous (Exogenous) plants. He finds the ratio of Monocotyledons
to Dicotyledons in the tropical zone as 1 : 5, and in the cold zones
of the parallels of 60° N. and 55° S. latitude, as 1 : 2-1/2. (Robert
Brown, General Remarks on the Botany of Terra Australis, in Flinders’
Voyage, vol. ii. p. 338.) The absolute number of species in the three
leading divisions of the vegetable kingdom are compared together in
that work according to the method there laid down. I was the first
to pass from these leading divisions to the divisions of the several
families, and to consider the ratio which the number of species of
each family bears to the entire mass of phænogamous plants belonging
to a zone of the earth’s surface. (Compare my memoir entitled De
distributione geographica Plantarum secundum cœli temperiem et
altitudinem montium, 1817, p. 24-44; and the farther development of the
subject of these numerical relations given by me in the Dictionnaire
des Sciences naturelles, T. xviii. 1820, p. 422-436; and in the Annales
de Chimie et de Physique, T. xvi. 1821, p. 267-292.)

The numerical relations of the forms of plants, and the laws observed
in their geographical distribution, may be considered in two very
different ways. If plants are studied in their arrangement according to
natural families, without regard to their geographical distribution,
it is asked, What are the fundamental forms or types of organisation
to which the greatest number of species correspond? Are there on the
entire surface of the earth more Glumaceæ than Compositæ? Do these
two orders make up between them one-fourth part of the whole number
of phænogamous plants? What is the proportion of Monocotyledons to
Dicotyledons? These are questions of General Phytology, or of the
science which investigates the organisation of plants and their mutual
connection, or the present state of the entire vegetable world.

If, on the other hand, the species of plants which have been grouped
according to the analogy of their structure are considered, not
abstractedly, but according to their climatic relations, or according
to their distribution over the surface of the earth, we have questions
offering quite another and distinct interest. We then examine what are
the families which prevail more in proportion to other Phanerogamæ
in the torrid zone than towards the polar circle? Are Compositæ more
numerous, either in the same geographical latitudes or on the same
isothermal lines, in the New than in the Old Continent? Do the forms
which gradually lose their predominance in advancing from the equator
towards the poles follow a similar law of decrease in ascending
mountains situated in the equatorial regions? Do the proportions of
particular families to the whole mass of Phanerogamæ differ in the
temperate zones, and on equal isothermal lines, north and south of the
equator? These questions belong properly to the Geography of Plants,
and connect themselves with the most important problems of meteorology
and terrestrial physics. The character of a landscape or country is
also in a high degree dependent on the predominance of particular
families of plants, which render it either desolate or adorned, smiling
or majestic. Grasses forming extensive savannahs, Palms and other trees
affording food, or social Coniferæ forming forests, have powerfully
influenced nations in respect to their material condition, to their
manners, to their mental dispositions, and to the more or less rapid
development of their prosperity.

In studying the geographical distribution of forms, we may consider
species, genera, and natural families, separately. In social plants, a
single species often covers extensive tracts of country; as in northern
regions forests of Pines or Firs and extensive heaths (ericeta), in
Spain cistus-covered grounds, and in tropical America assemblages of
the same species of Cactus, Croton, Brathys, or Bambusa Guadua. It is
interesting to examine these relations more closely, and to view in
one case the great multiplicity of individuals, and in another the
variety of organic development. We may inquire what species produces
the greatest number of individuals in a particular zone, or we may
ask which are the families to which, in different climates, the
greatest number of species belong. In a high northern region, where the
Compositæ and the Ferns are to the sum of all the phænogamous plants
in the ratio of 1 : 13 and 1 : 25 (_i. e._ where these ratios are
found by dividing the sum total of all the Phanerogamæ by the number
of species belonging to the family of Compositæ or to that of Filices
or Ferns), it may nevertheless happen that a single species of fern
covers ten times more ground than do all the species of Compositæ taken
together. In this case Ferns predominate over Compositæ by their mass,
or by the number of individuals belonging to the same species of Pteris
or Polypodium; but they do not so predominate if we only compare the
number of the different specific forms of Filices and Compositæ with
the sum of all the phænogamous plants. Since, then, multiplication of
plants does not follow the same law in all species,--that is to say,
all species do not produce the same number of individuals,--therefore
the quotients given by dividing the sum of the phænogamous plants
by the number of species belonging to one family, do not suffice
by themselves to determine the character of the landscape, or the
physiognomy which Nature assumes in different regions of the earth. If
the attention of the travelling botanist is engaged by the frequent
repetition of the same species, their mass, and the uniformity of
vegetation thus produced, it is even more arrested by the rarity or
infrequency of several other species which are valuable to mankind.
In tropical regions, where the Rubiaceæ, Myrtaceæ, Leguminosæ, or
Terebinthaceæ, form forests, one is astonished to find the trees of
Cinchona, particular species of Swietenia (Mahogany), Hæmatoxylon,
Styrax, and balsamic Myroxylum, so sparingly distributed. We had
occasion, on the declivities of the high plains of Bogota and Popayan,
and in the country round Loxa, in descending towards the unhealthy
valley of the Catamayo and to the Amazons River, to remark the manner
in which the trees which furnish the precious fever-bark (species of
Cinchona) are found singly and at considerable distances from each
other. The China Hunters, Cazadores de Cascarilla (the name given
at Loxa to the Indians and Mestizoes who collect each year the most
efficacious of all fever-barks, that of the Cinchona Condaminea, among
the lonely mountains of Caxanuma, Uritusinga, and Rumisitana), climb,
not without peril, to the summits of the loftiest forest trees in
order to gain a wide prospect, and to discern the solitarily scattered
slender aspiring trunks of the trees of which they are in search, and
which they recognise by the shining reddish tint of their large leaves.
The mean temperature of this important forest region, situated in 4°
to 4-1/2° S. lat. and at an elevation of about 6400 to 8000 English
feet, is from 12-1/2° to 16° Réaumur (60°·2 to 68° Fahr.) (Humboldt and
Bonpland, Plantes équinoxiales, T. i. p. 88, tab. 10.)

In considering the distribution of species, we may also proceed,
without regard to the multiplication of individuals, to the masses
which they form or the space which they occupy, and may simply compare
together the absolute number of species belonging to a particular
family in each country. This is the mode of comparison which Decandolle
has employed in the work entitled Regni vegetabilis Systema naturale
(T. i. p. 128, 396, 439, 464, and 510), and Kunth has carried it out
in regard to the whole number of species of Compositæ at present known
(above 3300). It does not show which is the predominant family either
in the number of species or in the quantity of individuals as compared
with other families; it merely tells how many of the species of one and
the same family are indigenous in each country or each quarter of the
world. The results of this method are on the whole more exact, because
they are obtained by the careful study of single families without the
necessity of being acquainted with the whole number of the phanerogamæ
belonging to each country. The most varied forms of Ferns, for example,
are found between the tropics; it is there, in the tempered heat
of moist and shaded places in mountainous islands, that each genus
presents the largest number of species: this variety of species in
each genus diminishes in passing from the tropical to the temperate
zone, and decreases still farther in approaching nearer to the pole.
Nevertheless, as in the cold zone--in Lapland, for example--those
plants succeed best which can best resist the cold, so the species
of Ferns, although the _absolute number_ is less than in France or
Germany, are yet _relatively_ more numerous than in those countries;
_i. e._ their number bears a greater proportion to the sum total of all
the phanerogamous plants of the country. These proportions or ratios,
given as above-mentioned by quotients, are in France and Germany 1/73
and 1/71, and in Lapland 1/25. I published numerical ratios of this
kind,--(_i. e._ the entire quantity of phænogamous plants in each
of the different Floras divided by the number of species in each
family)--in my Prolegomenis de distributione geographica Plantarum, in
1817; and in the Memoir on the distribution of plants over the Earth’s
surface, subsequently published in the French language, I corrected
my previously published numbers by Robert Brown’s great works. In
advancing from the Equator to the Poles, the ratios taken in this
manner vary considerably from the numbers which would be obtained
from a comparison of the _absolute_ number of species belonging to
each family. We often find the value of the fraction increase by the
decrease of the denominator, while yet the absolute number of species
has diminished. In the method by fractions, which I have followed as
more instructive in reference to the geography of plants, there are two
variables; for in proceeding from one isothermal line, or one zone of
equal temperature, to another, we do not see the sum total of all the
phanerogamæ change in the same proportion as does the number of species
belonging to a particular family.

We may, if we please, pass from the consideration of species to that
of divisions formed in the natural system of botany according to an
ideal series of abstractions, and direct our attention to Genera, to
Families, and even to the still higher, _i. e._ more comprehensive,
Classes. There are some genera, and even some entire families, which
belong exclusively to particular zones of the Earth’s surface; and this
not only because they can only flourish under a particular combination
of climatic conditions, but also because both the localities in
which they originated, and their migrations, have been limited. It
is otherwise with the greater number of genera and of families,
which have their representatives in all regions of the globe, and
at all latitudes of elevation. The earliest investigations into the
distribution of vegetable forms related solely to genera; we find them
in a valuable work of Treviranus, in his Biology (Bd. ii. S. 47, 63,
83, and 129). This method is, however, less fitted to afford general
results than that which compares either the number of species of each
family, or the great leading divisions (of Acotyledons, Monocotyledons,
and Dicotyledons) with the sum of all the phanerogamæ. We find that
in the cold zones the variety of forms does not decrease so much if
estimated by genera as if estimated by species; in other words, we
find relatively more genera and fewer species. (Decandolle, Théorie
élémentaire de la Botanique, p. 190; Humboldt, Nova genera et species
Plantarum, T. i pp. xvi. and 1.) It is almost the same in the case of
high mountains whose summits support single members of a large number
of genera, which we should have been _à priori_ inclined to regard as
belonging exclusively to the vegetation of the plains.

I have thought it desirable to indicate the different points of view
from which the laws of the geographical distribution of plants may
be considered. It is by confounding these different points of view
that apparent contradictions are found; which are unjustly attributed
to uncertainties of observation. (Jahrbücher der Gewächskunde, Bd. i
Berlin, 1818, S. 18, 21, 30.) When such expressions as the following
are made use of--“This form, or this family, diminishes as the
cold zones are approached;--it has its true home in such or such a
latitude;--it is a southern form;--it predominates in the temperate
zone;” care should always be taken to state expressly whether the
writer is speaking of the absolute number of species, and its increase
or decrease with the change of latitude; or whether he means that the
family in question prevails over other families of plants as compared
with the entire number of phanerogamæ of which a Flora consists. The
impression of prevalence as conveyed by the eye depends on relative
quantity.

Terrestrial physics have their numerical elements, as has the System
of the Universe, or Celestial Physics, and by the united labours of
botanical travellers we may expect to arrive gradually at a true
knowledge of the laws which determine the geographical and climatic
distribution of vegetable forms. I have already remarked that in the
temperate zone the Compositæ (Synanthereæ), and the Glumaceæ (including
under this latter name the three families of Grasses, Cyperoidæ and
Juncaceæ), make up the fourth part of all phænogamous plants. The
following numerical ratios are the results of my investigations for 7
great families of the vegetable kingdom in the same temperate zone.

  Glumaceæ     1/8 (Grasses alone 1/12)
  Compositæ    1/8
  Leguminosæ   1/18
  Labiatæ      1/24
  Umbelliferæ  1/40
  Amentaceæ (Cupuliferæ, Betulineæ, and Salicineæ)  1/45
  Cruciferæ    1/19

The forms of organic beings are in reciprocal dependence on each
other. In the unity of nature these forms limit each other according
to laws which are probably attached to periods of long duration. If
on any particular part of the globe we know with accuracy the number
of species of one of the great families of Glumaceæ, Leguminosæ,
or Compositæ, we may with a tolerable degree of probability form
approximative inferences, both as to the sum of all the phanerogamæ of
the country, and also as to the number of species belonging to the rest
of the leading families of plants. The number of Cyperoidæ determines
that of Compositæ, and the number of Compositæ that of Leguminosæ;
they even enable us to judge in what classes or orders the Floras of
countries are still incomplete, and teach us, if we are on our guard
against confounding together very different systems of vegetation, what
harvest may still remain to be reaped in the several families.

The comparison of the numerical ratios of families in different already
well explored zones, has conducted me to the recognition of laws
according to which, in proceeding from the equator to the poles, the
vegetable forms constituting a natural family decrease or increase as
compared with the whole mass of phanerogamæ belonging to each zone.
We have here to regard not only the direction of the change (whether
an increase or a decrease), but also its rapidity or measure. We see
the denominator of the fraction which expresses the ratio increase
or decrease: let us take as our example the beautiful family of
Leguminosæ, which decreases in going from the equinoctial zone towards
the North Pole. If we find its proportion or ratio for the torrid
zone (from 0° to 10° of latitude) at 1/10, we obtain for the part of
the temperate zone which is between 45° and 52° latitude 1/18, and for
the frigid zone (lat. 67° to 70°) only 1/35. The direction followed by
the great family of Leguminosæ (increase on approaching the equator),
is also that of the Rubiaceæ, the Euphorbiaceæ, and especially the
Malvaceæ. On the contrary, the Grasses and Juncaceæ (the latter still
more than the former), diminish in approaching the equator, as do
also the Ericeæ and Amentaceæ. The Compositæ, Labiatæ, Umbelliferæ,
and Cruciferæ, decrease in proceeding from the temperate zone, either
towards the pole or towards the equator, the Umbelliferæ and Cruciferæ
decreasing most rapidly in the last-named direction; while at the same
time in the temperate zone the Cruciferæ are three times more numerous
in Europe than in the United States of North America. On reaching
Greenland the Labiatæ have entirely disappeared with the exception of
one, and the Umbelliferæ with the exception of two species; the entire
number of phænogamous species, still amounting, according to Hornemann,
to 315 species.

It must be remarked at the same time that the development of plants of
different families, and the distribution of vegetable forms, does not
depend exclusively on geographical, or even on isothermal latitude; the
quotients are not always on the same isothermal line in the temperate
zone, for example, in the plains of North America and those of the
Old Continent. Within the tropics there is a very sensible difference
between America, India, and the West Coast of Africa. The distribution
of organic beings over the surface of the earth does not depend
wholly on thermic or climatic relations, which are of themselves
very complicated, but also on geological causes almost unknown to us,
belonging to the original state of the earth, and to catastrophes which
have not affected all parts of our planet simultaneously. The large
pachydermatous animals are at the present time wanting in the New
Continent, while we still find them in analogous climates in Asia and
Africa. These differences ought not to deter us from endeavouring to
search out the concealed laws of nature, but should rather stimulate us
to the study of them through all their intricacies.

The numerical laws of the families of plants, the often striking
agreement of the numbers expressing their ratios, where yet the
species of which the families consist are for the most part different,
conduct us into the mysterious obscurity which envelopes all that is
connected with the fixing of organic types in the species of plants
and animals, or with their original formation or creation. I will take
as examples two adjoining countries which have both been thoroughly
explored--France and Germany. In France, many species of Grasses,
Umbelliferæ and Cruciferæ, Compositæ, Leguminosæ, and Labiatæ, are
wanting which are common in Germany; and yet the numerical ratios of
these six great families are almost identical in the two countries, as
will be seen by the subjoined comparison.

    Families.   Germany.  France.
  Gramineæ.       1/13     1/13
  Umbelliferæ.    1/22     1/21
  Cruciferæ.      1/18     1/19
  Compositæ.      1/8      1/7
  Leguminosæ.     1/18     1/16
  Labiatæ.        1/26     1/24

This agreement in the number of species in each family compared to
the whole number of phenogamous species in the Floras of France
and Germany, would not by any means exist if the German species
which are missing in France were not replaced there by other types
belonging to the same families. Those who are fond of imagining
gradual transformations of species, and suppose the different kinds
of parrots proper to two islands not far removed from each other to
present examples of such a change, will be inclined to attribute the
remarkable similarity between the two columns of figures which have
just been given, to a migration of species, which, having been the same
at first, have been altered gradually by the long-continued action
of climatic causes during thousands of years, so that their identity
being lost they appear to replace each other. But why is it that our
common heather (Calluna vulgaris), why is it that our oaks have never
advanced to the eastward of the Ural Mountains, and so passed from
Europe to Northern Asia? Why is there no species of the genus Rosa in
the Southern Hemisphere, and why are there scarcely any Calceolarias
in the Northern Hemisphere? The necessary conditions of temperature
are insufficient to explain this. Thermic relations alone cannot, any
more than the hypothesis of migrations of plants radiating from certain
central points, explain the present distribution of fixed organic
forms. Thermic relations are hardly sufficient to explain the limits
beyond which individual species do not pass, either in latitude towards
the pole at the level of the sea, or in vertical elevation towards the
summits of mountains. The cycle of vegetation in each species, however
different its duration may be, requires, in order to be successfully
passed through, a certain minimum of temperature. (Playfair, in the
Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. v. 1805, p. 202;
Humboldt, on the sum of the degrees of temperature required for the
cycle of vegetation in the Cerealia, in Mem. sur les lignes isothermes,
p. 96; Boussingault, Economie rurale, T, ii. p. 659, 663, and 667;
Alphonse Decandolle sur les causes qui limitent les espèces végétales,
1847, p. 8.) But all the conditions necessary for the existence of a
plant, either as diffused naturally or by cultivation,--conditions
of latitude or minimum distance from the pole, and of elevation or
maximum height above the level of the sea,--are farther complicated by
the difficulty of determining the commencement of the thermic cycle
of vegetation, and by the influence which the unequal distribution of
the same quantity of heat into groups of successive days and nights
exercises on the excitability, the progressive development, and the
whole vital process; to all this must be farther added hygrometric
influences and those of atmospheric electricity.

My investigations respecting the numerical laws of the distribution
of forms may possibly be applied at some future day with advantage to
the different classes of Rotiferæ in the animal creation. The rich
collections at the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle in the Jardin des
Plantes at Paris, already contained, in 1820, (according to approximate
estimations) above 56000 phænogamous and cryptogamous plants in
herbariums, 44000 insects (a number doubtless too small, though given
me by Latreille), 2500 species of fish, 700 reptiles, 4000 birds, and
500 mammalia. Europe has about 80 species of indigenous mammalia, 400
birds, and 30 reptiles. In the Northern temperate zone, therefore, the
species of birds are five times more numerous than those of mammalia,
as there are in Europe five times as many Compositæ as there are
Amentaceæ and Coniferæ, and five times as many Leguminosæ as there
are Orchideæ and Euphorbiaceæ. In the southern hemisphere the ratio
of mammalia is in tolerably striking agreement, being as 1 to 4·3.
Birds, and still more reptiles, increase in the number of species in
approaching the torrid zone more than the mammalia. Cuvier’s researches
might lead us to believe that the proportion was different in the
earlier state of things, and that many more mammalia had perished by
revolutions of Nature than birds. Latreille has shewn what groups
of insects increase towards the pole, and what towards the equator.
Illiger has given the countries of 3800 species of birds according to
the quarters of the globe: it would have been much more instructive if
the same thing had been done according to zones. We should find little
difficulty in comprehending how on a given space of the earth’s surface
the individuals of a class of plants or animals limit each other’s
numbers, or how, after long continued contest and many fluctuations
caused by the requirements of nourishment and mode of life, a state
of equilibrium should be at last established; but the causes which
have limited not the number of individuals of a form, but the forms
themselves, in a particular space, and founded their typical diversity,
are placed beneath the impenetrable veil which still conceals from
our eyes all that relates to the manner of the first creation and
commencement of organic beings.

If, then, we would attempt to solve the question spoken of in the early
part of this dissertation, by giving in an approximate manner the
numerical limit, (le nombre limite of French mathematicians), which
the whole phanerogamæ now existing on the surface of the earth cannot
be supposed to fall short of, we may perhaps find our safest guide
in a comparison of the numerical ratios (which, as we have seen, may
be assumed to exist between the different families of plants), with
the number of species contained in herbariums and cultivated in our
great botanic gardens. I have said that in 1820 the number of species
contained in the herbariums of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris was
already estimated at 56000. I do not permit myself to conjecture the
amount which the herbariums of England may contain; but the great Paris
herbarium, which was formed with much personal sacrifice by Benjamin
Delessert, and given by him for free and general use, was stated at his
death to contain 86000 species; a number almost equal to that which, as
late as 1835, was conjecturally assigned by Lindley as that of all the
species existing on the whole earth. (Lindley, Introduction to Botany,
2d edit. p. 504.) Few herbariums have been reckoned with care, after a
complete and strict separation and withdrawal of all mere varieties.
Not a few plants contained in smaller collections are still wanting in
the greater herbariums which are supposed to be general or complete.
Dr. Klotzsch estimates the present entire number of phænogamous plants
in the great Royal Herbarium at Schöneberg, near Berlin, of which he
is the curator, at 74000 species.

Loudon’s useful work, Hortus Britannicus, gives an approximate view of
all the species which are, or at no remote time have been, cultivated
in British gardens: the edition of 1832 enumerates, including
indigenous plants, exactly 26660 phænogamous species. We must not
confound with this large number of plants which have grown or been
cultivated at any time and in any part of the whole British Islands,
the number of living plants which can be shewn at any single moment
of time in any single botanic garden. In this last-named respect the
Botanic Garden of Berlin has long been regarded as one of the richest
in Europe. The fame of its extraordinary riches rested formerly only
on uncertain and approximate estimations, and, as my fellow-labourer
and friend of many years’ standing, Professor Kunth, has justly
remarked (in manuscript notices communicated to the Gartenbau-Verein
in December 1846), “no real enumeration or computation could be
made until a systematic catalogue, based on a rigorous examination
of species, had been prepared. Such an enumeration has given rather
above 14060 species: if we deduct from this number 375 cultivated
Ferns, we have remaining 13685 phænogamous species; among which we
find 1600 Compositæ, 1150 Leguminosæ, 428 Labiatæ, 370 Umbelliferæ,
460 Orchideæ, 60 Palms, and 600 Grasses and Cyperaceæ. If we compare
with these numbers those of the species already described in recent
works,--Compositæ (Decandolle and Walpers) about 10000; Leguminosæ,
8070; Labiatæ (Bentham), 2190; Umbelliferæ, 1620; Grasses, 3544; and
Cyperaceæ (Kunth, Enumeratio Plantarum), 2000;--we shall perceive
that the Berlin Botanic Garden cultivates, of the very large families
(Compositæ, Leguminosæ, and Grasses), only 1-7th, 1-8th, and
1-9th;--and of the small families (Labiatæ and Umbelliferæ), about
1-5th, or 1-4th, of described species. If, then, we estimate the number
of all the different phænogamous plants cultivated at one time in all
the botanic gardens of Europe at 20000, we find that the cultivated
species appear to be about the eighth part of those which are already
either described or preserved in herbariums, and that these must nearly
amount to 160000. This estimate need not be thought excessive, since
of many of the larger families, (for example, Guttiferæ, Malpighiaceæ,
Melastomeæ, Myrtaceæ, and Rubiaceæ), hardly a hundredth part are found
in our garden.” If we take the number given by Loudon in his Hortus
Britannicus (26660 species) as a basis, we shall find, (according
to the justly drawn succession of inferences of Professor Kunth, in
the manuscript notices from which I have borrowed the above), the
estimate of 160000 species rise to 213000; and even this is still very
moderate, for Heynhold’s Nomenclator botanicus hortensis (1846) even
rates the phænogamous species then cultivated at 35600; whereas I have
employed Loudon’s number for 1832, viz. 26660. On the whole it would
appear from what has been said,--and the conclusion is at first sight
a sufficiently striking one,--that at present there are almost more
known species of phænogamous plants (with which we are acquainted by
gardens, descriptions, or herbariums), than there are known insects.
According to the average of the statements which I have received from
several of our most distinguished entomologists whom I have had the
opportunity of consulting, the number of insects at present described,
or contained in collections without being described, may be taken at
between 150000 and 170000 species. The rich Berlin collection does
not contain less than 90000 species, among which are about 82000
Coleoptera. A very large number of plants have been collected in
distant parts of the globe, without the insects which live on them or
near them being brought at the same time. If, however, we limit the
estimates of numbers to a single part of the world, and that the one
which has been the best explored in respect to both plants and insects,
viz. Europe, we find a very different proportion; for while we can
hardly enumerate between seven and eight thousand European phænogamous
plants, more than three times that number of European insects are
already known. According to the interesting communications of my friend
Dohrn at Stettin, 8700 insects have already been collected from the
rich Fauna of that vicinity, (and many micro-Lepidopteræ are still
wanting), while the phænogamous plants of the same district scarcely
exceed 1000. The Insect Fauna of Great Britain is estimated at 11600
species. Such a preponderance of animal forms need the less surprise
us, since large classes of insects subsist solely on animal substances,
and others on agamous vegetation (funguses, and even those which are
subterranean). Bombyx pini alone (the spider which infests the Scotch
fir, and is the most destructive of all forest insects), is visited,
according to Ratzeburg, by thirty-five parasitical Ichneumonides.

If these considerations have led us to the proportion borne by the
species of plants cultivated in gardens to the entire amount of those
which are already either described or preserved in herbariums, we
have still to consider the proportion borne by the latter to what we
conjecture to be the whole number of forms existing upon the earth at
the present time; _i. e._ to test the assumed minimum of such forms by
the relative numbers of species in the different families, therefore,
by uncertain multipliers. Such a test, however, gives for the lowest
limit or minimum number results so low as to lead us to perceive
that even in the great families,--our knowledge of which has been of
late most strikingly enriched by the descriptions of botanists,--we
are still acquainted with only a small part of existing plants. The
Repertorium of Walpers completes Decandolle’s Prodromus of 1825, up
to 1846: we find in it, in the family of Leguminosæ, 8068 species. We
may assume the ratio, or relative numerical proportion of this family
to all phænogamous plants, to be 1/21--as we find it 1/10 within the
tropics, 1/18 in the middle temperate, and 1/33 in the cold northern
zone. The _described_ Leguminosæ would thus lead us to assume only
169400 existing phænogamous species on the whole surface of the
earth, whereas, as we have shewn, the Compositæ indicate more than
160000 already _known_ species. The discordance is instructive, and
may be further elucidated and illustrated by the following analogous
considerations.

The major part of the Compositæ, of which Linnæus knew only 785
species and which has now grown to 12000, appear to belong to the Old
Continent: at least Decandolle described only 3590 American, whilst the
European, Asiatic, and African species amounted to 5093. This apparent
richness in Compositæ is, however, illusive, and considerable only in
appearance; the ratio or quotient of the family, (1/15 between the
tropics, 1/7 in the temperate zone, and 1/13 in the cold zone), shews
that even more species of Compositæ than Leguminosæ must hitherto have
escaped the researches of travellers; for a multiplication by 12 would
give us only the improbably low number of 144000 Phænogamous species.
The families of Grasses and Cyperaceæ give still lower results, because
comparatively still fewer of their species have been described and
collected. We have only to cast our eyes on the map of South America,
remembering the wide extent of territory occupied by grassy plains, not
only in Venezuela and on the banks of the Apure and the Meta, but also
to the south of the forest-covered regions of the Amazons, in Chaco,
Eastern Tucuman, and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres and Patagonia, bearing
in mind that of all these extensive regions the greater part have never
been explored by botanists, and the remainder only imperfectly and
incompletely so. Northern and Central Asia offer an almost equal extent
of Steppes, but in which, however, dicotyledonous herbaceous plants are
more largely mingled with the Gramineæ. If we had sufficient grounds
for believing that we are now acquainted with half the phænogamous
plants on the globe, and if we took the number of known species only at
one or other of the before-mentioned numbers of 160000 or 213000, we
should still have to take the number of grasses (the general proportion
of which appears to be 1/12), in the first case at least at 26000,
and in the second case at 35000 different species, which would give
respectively in the two cases only either 1/8 or 1/10 part as known.

The assumption that we already know half the existing species of
phænogamous plants is farther opposed by the following considerations.
Several thousand species of Monocotyledons and Dycotyledons, and
among them tall trees,--(I refer here to my own Expedition),--have
been discovered in regions, considerable portions of which had been
previously examined by distinguished botanists. The portions of the
great continents which have never even been trodden by botanical
observers considerably exceed in area those which have been traversed
by such travellers, even in a superficial manner. The greatest variety
of phænogamous vegetation, _i. e._ the greatest number of species on
a given area, is found between the tropics, and in the sub-tropical
zones. This last-mentioned consideration renders it so much the more
important to remember how almost entirely unacquainted we are, on
the New Continent, north of the equator, with the Floras of Oaxaca,
Yucatan, Guatimala, Nicaragua, the Isthmus of Panama, Choco, Antioquia,
and the Provincia de los Pastos;--and south of the equator, with the
Floras of the vast forest region: between the Ucayale, the Rio de la
Madera, and the Tocantin (three great tributaries of the Amazons), and
with those of Paraguay and the Provincia de los Missiones. In Africa,
except in respect to the coasts, we know nothing of the vegetation
from 15° north to 20° south latitude; in Asia we are unacquainted
with the Floras of the south and south-east of Arabia, where the
highlands rise to about 6400 English feet above the level of the
sea,--of the countries between the Thian-schan, the Kuenlün, and the
Himalaya, all the west part of China, and the greater part of the
countries beyond the Ganges. Still more unknown to the botanist are
the interior of Borneo, New Guinea, and part of Australia. Farther
to the south the number of species undergoes a wonderful diminution,
as Joseph Hooker has well and ably shewn from his own observation in
his Antarctic Flora. The three islands of which New Zealand consists
extend from 34-1/2° to 47-1/4° S. latitude, and as they contain,
moreover, snowy mountains of above 8850 English feet elevation, they
must include considerable diversity of climate. The Northern Island
has been examined with tolerable completeness from the voyage of Banks
and Solander to Lesson and the Brothers Cunningham and Colenso, and
yet in more than 70 years we have only become acquainted with less
than 700 phænogamous 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 Antarctica,
p. 73-75, remarks that the “botany of the densely wooded regions of
the Southern Islands of the New Zealand groups 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 Antarctic Flora, under the influence of a cool and moist, but
singularly equable climate, great uniformity, arising from paucity
of species, is associated with great luxuriance of vegetation. This
striking uniformity prevails both at different 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°. 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 how great a difference of species is found; while in
the Southern Hemisphere the same types of vegetation pass through
many degrees of latitude. Lastly, on Walden Island, in lat. 80-1/2°
N., or not ten degrees from the North Pole of the earth, ten species
of flowering plants have been collected, while in the southernmost
islet of the South Shetlands, though only in lat. 63° S., only a
solitary grass was found.” These considerations on the distribution
of plants confirm the belief that the great mass of still unobserved,
uncollected, and undescribed flowering plants must be sought for in
tropical countries, and in the latitudes from 12° to 15° distant from
the tropics.

It has appeared to me not unimportant to show the imperfect state
of our knowledge in this still little cultivated department of
arithmetical botany, and to propound numerical questions in a more
distinct and determinate manner than could have been previously done.
In all conjectures respecting numerical relations we must seek first
for the possibility of deducing the lower or minimum limits; as in
a question treated of by me elsewhere, on the proportion of coined
gold and silver to the quantity of the precious metal fabricated in
other ways; or as in the questions of how many stars, from the 10th to
the 12th magnitude, are dispersed over the sky, and how many of the
smallest telescopic stars the Milky Way may contain. (John Herschel,
Results of Astron. Observ. at the Cape of Good Hope, 1847, p. 381.)
We may consider it as established, that if it were possible to know
completely and thoroughly by observation all the species belonging to
_one_ of the great families of phanerogamous or flowering plants, we
should learn thereby at the same time, approximatively, the entire
sum of _all_ such plants (including all the families). As, therefore,
by the progressive exploration of new countries we progressively and
gradually exhaust the remaining unknown species of any of the great
families, the previously assigned lowest limit rises gradually higher,
and since the forms reciprocally limit each other in conformity
with still undiscovered laws of universal organisation, we approach
continually nearer to the solution of the great numerical problem of
organic life. But is the number of organic forms itself a constant
number? Do new vegetable forms spring from the ground after long
periods of time, while others become more and more rare, and at last
disappear? Geology, by means of her historical monuments of ancient
terrestrial life, answers to the latter portion of this question
affirmatively. “In the Ancient World,” to use the remark of an eminent
naturalist, Link (Abhandl. der Akad. der Wiss. zu Berlin aus dem Jahr
1846, S. 322), “we see characters, now apparently remote and widely
separated from each other, associated or crowded together in wondrous
forms, as if a greater development and separation awaited a later age
in the history of our planet.”

[14] p. 19.--“_If the height of the aerial ocean and its pressure have
not always been the same._”

The pressure of the atmosphere has a decided influence on the form
and life of plants. From the abundance and importance of their leafy
organs provided with porous openings, plants live principally in and
through their surfaces; and hence their dependence on the surrounding
medium. Animals are dependent rather on internal impulses and stimuli;
they originate and maintain their own temperature, and, by means of
muscular movement, their own electric currents, and the chemical vital
processes which depend on and react upon those currents. A species
of skin-respiration is an active and important vital function in
plants, and this respiration, in so far as it consists in evaporation,
inhalation, and exhalation of fluids, is dependent on the pressure of
the atmosphere. Therefore it is that alpine plants are more aromatic,
and are hairy and covered with numerous pores. (See my work über die
gereizte Muskel- und Nervenfaser, Bd. ii. S. 142-145.) For according to
Zoonomic experience, organs become more abundant and more perfect in
proportion to the facility with which the conditions necessary for the
exercise of their functions are fulfilled,--as I have elsewhere shown.
In alpine plants the disturbance of their skin-respiration occasioned
by increased atmospheric pressure makes it very difficult for such
plants to flourish in the low grounds.

The question whether the mean pressure of the aerial ocean which
surrounds our globe has always been the same is quite undecided: we
do not even know accurately whether the mean height of the barometer
has continued the same at the same place for a century past. According
to Poleni’s and Toaldo’s observations, the pressure would have seemed
to vary. The correctness of these observations has long been doubted,
but the recent researches of Carlini render it almost probable that
the mean height of the barometer is diminishing in Milan. Perhaps
the phenomenon is a very local one, and dependent on variations in
descending atmospheric currents.

[15] p. 20.--“_Palms._”

It is remarkable that of this majestic form of plants,--(some of which
rise to more than twice the height of the Royal Palace at Berlin, and
to which the Indian Amarasinha gave the characteristic appellation of
“Kings among the Grasses”),--up to the time of the death of Linnæus
only 15 species were described. The Peruvian travellers Ruiz and Pavon
added to these 8 more species. Bonpland and I, in passing over a more
extensive range of country from 12° S. lat. to 21° N. lat., described
20 new species of palms, and distinguished as many more, but without
being able to obtain complete specimens of their flowers. (Humboldt
de distrib. geogr. Plantarum, p. 225-233.) At the present time, 44
years after my return from Mexico, there are from the Old and New
World, including the East Indian species brought by Griffith, above
440 regularly described species. The Enumeratio Plantarum of my friend
Kunth, published in 1841, had already 356 species.

A few, but only a few species of palms, are, like our Coniferæ,
Quercineæ, and Betulineæ, social plants: such are the Mauritia
flexuosa, and two species of Chamærops, one of which, the Chamærops
humilis, occupies extensive tracts of ground near the Mouth of the Ebro
and in Valencia; and the other, C. mocini, discovered by us on the
Mexican shore of the Pacific and entirely without prickles, is also a
social plant. While some kinds of palms, including Chamærops and Cocos,
are littoral or shore-loving trees, there is in the tropics a peculiar
group of mountain palms, which if I am not mistaken was entirely
unknown previous to my South American travels. Almost all species
of the family of palms grow on the plains or low grounds in a mean
temperature of between 22° and 24° Reaumur (81°.5 and 86°, Fahr.);
rarely ascending so high as 1900 English feet on the declivities of the
Andes: but in the mountain palms to which I have alluded, the beautiful
Wax-palm (Ceroxylon andicola), the Palmeto of Azufral at the Pass of
Quindiu (Oreodoxa frigida), and the reed-like Kunthia montana (Caña de
la Vibora) of Pasto, attain elevations between 6400 and 9600 English
feet above the level of the sea, where the thermometer often sinks
at night as low as 4°.8 and 6° of Reaumur (42°.8 and 45.°5, Fahr.),
and the mean temperature scarcely amounts to 11° Reaumur, or 56°.8
Fahrenheit. These Alpine Palms grow among Nut trees, yew-leaved species
of Podocarpus and Oaks (Quercus granatensis). I have determined by
exact barometrical measurement the upper and lower limits of the range
of the Wax-Palm. We first began to find it on the eastern declivity of
Andes of Quindiu, at the height of 7440 (about 7930 English) feet above
the level of the sea, and it extended upwards as far as the Garita del
Paramo and los Volcancitos, or to 9100 (almost 9700 English) feet:
several years after my departure from the country the distinguished
botanist Don Jose Caldas, who had been long our companion amidst the
mountains of New Granada, and who afterwards fell a victim to Spanish
party hatred, found three species of palms growing in the Paramo de
Guanacos very near the limits of perpetual snow; therefore probably at
an elevation of more than 13000 (13855 English) feet. (Semanario de
Santa Fé de Bogotá, 1809, No. 21, p, 163.) Even beyond the tropics,
in the latitude of 28° North, the Chamærops martiana reaches on the
sub-Himalayan mountains a height of 5000 English feet. (Wallich, Plantæ
Asiaticæ, Vol. iii. Tab. 211.)

If we look for the extreme geographical limits of palms, (which are
also the extreme climatic limits in all the species which inhabit
localities but little raised above the level of the sea), we see
some, as the date-palm, the Chamærops humilis, C. palmetto, and the
Areca sapida of New Zealand, advance far into the temperate zones of
either hemisphere, into regions where the mean temperature of the year
hardly equals 11°.2 and 12°.5 Reaumur (57°.2, and 60°.2 Fahrenheit).
If we form a series of cultivated plants or trees, placed in order of
succession according to the degree of heat they require, and beginning
with the maximum, we have Cacao, Indigo, Plantains, Coffee, Cotton,
Date-palms, Orange and Lemon Trees, Olives, Sweet Chestnuts, and
Vines. In Europe, date-palms (introduced, not indigenous) grow mingled
with Chamærops humilis in the parallels of 43-1/2° and 44°, as on the
Genoese Rivera del Ponente, near Bordighera, between Monaco and San
Stefano, where there is an assemblage of more than 4000 palm-stems; and
in Dalmatia round Spalatro. It is remarkable that Chamærops humilis
is abundant both at Nice and in Sardinia, and yet is not found in the
island of Corsica which lies between those localities. In the New
Continent, the Chamærops palmetto, which is sometimes above 40 English
feet high, only advances as far North as 34° latitude, a difference
sufficiently explained by the inflexions of the isothermal lines. In
the Southern hemisphere, in New Holland, palms, of which there are
very few, (six or seven species) only advance to 34° of latitude (see
Robert Brown’s general remarks on the Botany of Terra Australis, p.
45); and in New Zealand, where Sir Joseph Banks first saw an Areca
palm, they reach the 38th parallel. In Africa, which, quite contrary to
the ancient and still widely prevailing belief, is poor in species of
palms, only one palm, the Hyphæne coriacea, advances to Port Natal in
30° latitude. The continent of South America presents almost the same
limits in respect to latitude. On the eastern side of the Andes, in the
Pampas of Buenos Ayres and in the Cis-Plata province, palms extend,
according to Auguste de St.-Hilaire, to 34° and 35° S. latitude. This
is also the latitude to which on the western side of the Andes the Coco
de Chile (our Jubæa spectabilis?), the only Chilian palm, extends,
according to Claude Gay, being as far as the banks of the Rio Maule.
(See also Darwin’s Journal, edition of 1845, p. 244 and 256).

I will here introduce some detached remarks which I wrote in March,
1801, on board the ship in which we were sailing from the palmy shores
of the mouth of the Rio Sinu, west of Darien, to Cartagena de las
Indias.

“We have now, in the course of the two years which we have spent in
South America, seen 27 different species of palms. How many must
Commerson, Thunberg, Banks, Solander, the two Forsters, Adanson, and
Sonnerat, have observed in their distant voyages! Yet, at the present
moment, when I write these lines, our systems of botany do not include
more than from 14 to 18 systematically described species. In truth,
the difficulty of procuring the flowers of palms is greater than can
readily be imagined. We have felt it so much the more from having
especially directed our attention to Palms, Grasses, Cyperaceæ,
Juncaceæ, Cryptogamous Plants, and such other objects as have been
least studied hitherto. Most species of palms flower only once a
year, in the neighbourhood of the Equator in the months of January
and February. But how often is it impossible for travellers to be
precisely at that season in places where palms are principally found.
In many species of palms the flowers last only so few days that one
almost always arrives too late, and finds the fertilization completed
and the male blossoms gone. Frequently only three or four species of
palms are found in areas of 2000 square German geographical miles
(3200 English geographical square miles). How is it possible during
the short flowering season to visit the different places where palms
abound: the Missions on the Rio Caroni, the Morichales at the mouth
of the Orinoco, the valley of Caura and Erevato, the banks of the
Atabapo and the Rio Negro, and the side of the Duida Mountain? Add
to this the difficulty of reaching the flowers, when, in the dense
forests, or on the swampy river banks, (as on the Temi and Tuamini),
one sees them hanging from stems above 60 feet high, and armed with
formidable spines. A traveller, when preparing to leave Europe on an
expedition in which natural history is one of his leading objects,
flatters himself with the thoughts of shears or curved blades fastened
to long poles, with which he imagines he will be able to reach and
cut down whatever he desires; he dreams, too, of native boys, who,
with a cord fastened to their two feet, are to climb up the highest
trees at his bidding. But, alas! very few of these fancies are ever
realised; the great height of the blossoms renders the poles useless;
and in the missions established on the banks of the rivers of Guiana,
the traveller finds himself among Indians whose poverty, stoicism,
and uncultivated state, renders them so rich, and so free from wants
of every kind, that neither money nor other presents that can be made
to them will induce them to turn three steps out of their path. This
insurmountable apathy is the more provoking to a European, because
he sees the same people climb with inconceivable agility wherever
their own fancies lead them; for example, when they wish to catch
a parrot, or an iguana, or a monkey, which having been wounded by
their arrows saves himself from falling by holding on to the branches
with his prehensile tail. Even at the Havannah we met with a similar
disappointment. We were there in the month of January, and saw all the
trees of the Palma Real (our Oreodoxa Regia), in the immediate vicinity
of the city and on the public walks, adorned with snow-white blossoms.
For several days we offered the negro boys whom we met in the streets
of Regla and Guanavacoa two piastres for a single bunch of the blossoms
which we wanted, but in vain! Between the tropics men are indisposed
to laborious exertion, unless compelled by constraint or by extreme
destitution. The botanists and artists of the Royal Spanish Commission
for researches in Natural History, under the direction of Count Jaruco
y Mopor (Estevez, Boldo, Guio, and Echeveria),--acknowledged to us
that during several years they had not been able to obtain these
flowers for examination. These difficulties sufficiently explain what
would have been incomprehensible to me before my voyage, namely, that
although during our two years’ stay up to the present time, we have,
indeed, discovered more than 20 different species of palms, we have
as yet been only able to describe systematically 12. How interesting
a work might be produced by a traveller in South America who should
occupy himself exclusively with the study of palms, and should make
drawings of the spathe, spadix, inflorescence, and fruit, all of the
size of nature!” (I wrote this many years before the Brazilian travels
of Martius and Spix, and the admirable and excellent work of Martius on
Palms.) “There is considerable uniformity in the shape of the leaves
of palms; they are generally either pinnate (feathery, or divided like
the plume of a feather);--or else palmate or palmo-digitate (of a
fan-like form); the leaf-stalk (petiolus), is in some species without
spines, in others sharply toothed (serrato-spinosus). The form of the
leaf in Caryota urens and Martinezia caryotifolia, (which we saw on the
banks of the Orinoco and Atabapo, and again in the Andes, at the pass
of Quindiu, 3000 Fr. (3197 English) feet above the level of the sea),
is exceptional and almost unique among palms, as is the form of the
leaf of the Gingko among trees. The port and physiognomy of palms have
a grandeur of character very difficult to convey by words. The stem,
shaft, or caudex, is generally simple and undivided, but in extremely
rare exceptions divides into branches in the manner of the Dracænas,
as in Cucifera thebaica (the Doum-palm), and Hyphæne coriacea. It is
sometimes disproportionately thick (as in Corozo del Sinu, our Alfonsia
oleifera); sometimes feeble as a reed (as in Piritu, Kunthia montana,
and the Mexican Corypha nana); sometimes swelling towards the base (as
in Cocos); sometimes smooth, and sometimes scaly (Palma de covija o de
sombrero, in the Llanos); sometimes armed with spines (as Corozo de
Cumana and Macanilla de Caripe), the long spines being distributed with
much regularity in concentric rings.

“Characteristic differences are also furnished in some species by roots
which, springing from the stem at about a foot or a foot and a half
above the ground, either raise the stem as it were upon a scaffolding,
or surround it with thick buttresses. I have seen Viverras, and even
very small monkeys, pass underneath this kind of scaffolding formed
by the roots of the Caryota. Often the shaft or stem is swollen only
in the middle, being more slender above and below, as in the Palma
Real of the Island of Cuba. The leaves are sometimes of a dark and
shining green (as in the Mauritia and the Cocoa nut palm); sometimes
of a silvery white on the under side (as in the slender Fan-palm,
Corypha miraguama, which we found in the Harbour of Trinidad de Cuba).
Sometimes the middle of the fan or palmate leaf is ornamented with
concentric yellowish or bluish stripes like a peacock’s tail; as in
the thorny Mauritia which Bonpland discovered on the banks of the Rio
Atabapo.

“The direction of the leaves is a character not less important than
their form and colour. The leaflets (foliola), are sometimes arranged
like the teeth of a comb, set on in the same plane, and close to each
other, and having a very rigid parenchyma (as in Cocos, and in Phœnix
the genus to which the Date belongs); whence the fine play of light
from the sun-beams falling on the upper surface of the leaves (which
is of a fresher verdure in Cocos, and of a more dead and ashy hue in
the date palm); sometimes the leaves are flag-like, of a thinner and
more flexible texture, and curl towards the extremities (as in Jagua,
Palma Real del Sinu, Palma Real de Cuba, and Piritu dell’ Orinoco). The
peculiarly majestic character of palms is given not only by their lofty
stems, but also in a very high degree by the direction of their leaves.
It is part of the beauty of any particular species of palms that its
leaves should possess this aspiring character; and not only in youth,
as is the case in the Date-palm, but also throughout the duration of
the life of the tree. The more upright the direction of the leaves,
or, in other words, the more acute the angles which they form with the
upper part or continuation of the stem, the grander and more imposing
is the general character and physiognomy of the tree. How different are
the character and aspect given by the drooping leaves of the Palma de
covija del Orinoco y de los Llanos de Calabozo (Corypha tectorum); the
more nearly horizontal or at least less upright leaves of the Date and
Cocoa-nut palms; and the aspiring heavenward pointing branches of the
Jagua, the Cucurito, and the Pirijao!

“Nature has lavished every beauty of form on the Jagua palm, which,
intermingled with the Cucurito or Vadgihai, (85 to 106 English feet
high), adorns the cataracts of Atures and Maypures, and is occasionally
found also on the lonely banks of the Cassiquiare. The smooth slender
stems of the Jagua, rising to between 64 and 75 English feet,
appear above the dense mass of foliage of other kinds of trees from
amidst which they spring like raised colonnades, their airy summits
contrasting beautifully with the thickly-leaved species of Ceiba, and
with the forest of Laurineæ, Calophyllum, and different species of
Amyris which surround them. The leaves of the Jagua, which are few in
number (scarcely so many as seven or eight), are sixteen or seventeen
feet long, and rise almost vertically into the air; their extremities
are curled like plumes; the ultimate divisions or leaflets, having only
a thin grass-like parenchyma, flutter lightly and airily round the
slowly balancing central leaf-stalks. In all palms the inflorescence
springs from the trunk itself, and below the place where the leaves
originate; but the manner in which this takes place modifies the
physiognomic character. In a few species only (as the Corozo del
Sinu), the spathe (or sheath enclosing the flowers and fruits), rises
vertically, and the fruits stand erect, forming a kind of thyrsus, like
the fruits of the Bromelia: in most species of palms the spathes (which
are sometimes smooth and sometimes rough and armed with formidable
spines) are pendent; in a few species the male flowers are of a
dazzling whiteness, and in such cases the flower-covered spadix, when
fully developed, shines from afar. In most species of palms the male
flowers are yellowish, closely crowded, and appear almost withered when
they disengage themselves from the spathe.

“In Palms with pinnate foliage, the leaf-stalks either proceed (as in
the Cocoa-nut, the Date, and the Palma Real del Sinu) from the dry,
rough, woody part of the stem; or, as in the Palma Real de la Havana
(Oreodoxa regia) seen and admired by Columbus, there rises upon the
rough part of the stem a grass-green, smooth, thinner shaft, like a
column placed upon a column, and from this the leaf-stalks spring. In
fan-palms, “foliis palmatis,” the leafy crown (as in the Moriche
and the Palma sombrero de la Havana) often rests on a previous bed
of dry leaves, a circumstance which gives to the tree a sombre and
melancholy appearance. In some umbrella-palms the crown consists of
very few leaves, which rise upwards, carried on very slender petioles
or foot-stalks (as in Miraguama).

“The form and colour of the fruits of Palms also offer much more
variety than is commonly believed in Europe. Mauritia flexuosa bears
egg-shaped fruits, whose scaly, brown, and shining surface, gives them
something of the appearance of young fir-cones. What a difference
between the enormous triangular cocoa-nut, the soft fleshy berries
of the date, and the small hard fruits of the Corozo! But among the
fruits of palms none equal in beauty those of the Pirijao (Pihiguao of
S. Fernando de Atabapo and S. Balthasar); they are egg-shaped, mealy,
and usually without seeds, two or three inches thick, and of a golden
colour, which on one side is overspread with crimson; and these richly
coloured fruits, crowded together in a bunch, like grapes, are pendent
from the summits of majestic palm trees.” I have already spoken in the
first volume of the present work, p. 216, of these beautiful fruits, of
which there are seventy or eighty in a bunch, and which can be prepared
as food in a variety of ways, like plantains and potatoes.

In some species of Palms the flower sheath, or spathe surrounding the
spadix and the flowers, opens suddenly with an audible sound. Richard
Schomburgk (Reisen in Britisch Guiana, Th. i. S. 55) has like myself
observed this phenomenon in the flowering of the Oreodoxa oleracea.
This first opening of the flowers of Palms accompanied by sound recalls
the vernal Dithyrambus of Pindar, and the moment when, in Argive Nemea,
“the first opening shoot of the date-palm proclaims the arrival of
balmy spring.” (Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 10; Eng. ed. p. 10.)

Three vegetable forms of peculiar beauty are proper to the tropical
zone in all parts of the globe; Palms, Plantains or Bananas, and
Arborescent Ferns. It is where heat and moisture are combined that
vegetation is most vigorous, and its forms most varied; and hence South
America excels the rest of the tropical world in the number and beauty
of her species of Palms. In Asia this form of vegetation is more rare,
perhaps because a considerable part of the Indian continent which was
situated immediately under the equinoctial line has been broken up and
covered by the sea in the course of former geological revolutions. We
know scarcely anything of the palm trees of Africa between the Bight
of Benin and the Coast of Ajan; and, generally speaking, we are only
acquainted, as has been already remarked, with a very small number of
species of Palms belonging to that quarter of the globe.

Palms afford, next to Coniferæ and species of Eucalyptus belonging
to the family of Myrtaceæ, examples of the greatest loftiness of
stature attained by any of the members of the vegetable kingdom. Of
the Cabbage Palm (Areca oleracea), stems have been seen from 150 to
160 French (160 to 170 English) feet high. (Aug. de Saint-Hilaire,
Morphologie végétale, 1840, p. 176.) The Wax-palm, our Ceroxylon
andicola, discovered by us on the Andes between Ibague and Carthago, on
the Montaña de Quindiu, attains the immense height of 160 to 180 French
(170 to 192 English) feet. I was able to measure with exactness the
prostrate trunks which had been cut down and were lying in the forest.
Next to the Wax-palm, Oreodoxa Sancona, which we found in flower near
Roldanilla in the Cauca Valley, and which affords a very hard and
excellent building wood, appeared to me to be the tallest of American
palms. The circumstance that notwithstanding the enormous quantity of
fruits produced by a single Palm tree, the number of individuals of
each species which are found in a wild state is not very considerable,
can only be explained by the frequently abortive development of the
fruits (and consequent absence of seeds), and by the voracity of their
numerous assailants, belonging to all classes of the animal world. Yet
although I have said that the wild individuals are not very numerous,
there are in the basin of the Orinoco entire tribes of men who live
for several months of the year on the fruits of palms. “In palmetis,
Pihiguao consitis, singuli trunci quotannis fere 400 fructus ferunt
pomiformes, tritumque est verbum inter Fratres S. Francisci, ad ripas
Orinoci et Gauiniæ degentes, mire pinguescere Indorum corpora, quoties
uberem Palmæ fructum fundant.” (Humboldt, de Distrib. geogr. Plant. p.
240.)

[16] p. 22.--“_Since the earliest infancy of human civilisation._”

In all tropical countries we find the cultivation of the Banana or
Plantain established from the earliest times with which tradition
or history make us acquainted. It is certain that in the course of
the last few centuries African slaves have brought new varieties to
America, but it is equally certain that Plantains were cultivated in
the new world before its discovery by Columbus. The Guaikeri Indians at
Cumana assured us that on the Coast of Paria, near the Golfo Triste,
when the fruits were allowed to remain on the tree till ripe, the
plantain sometimes produced seeds which would germinate; and in this
manner plantains are occasionally found growing wild in the recesses of
the forest, from ripe seeds conveyed thither by birds. Perfectly formed
seeds have also sometimes been found in plantain fruits at Bordones,
near Cumana. (Compare my Essai sur la Géographie des Plantes, p. 29;
and my Relat. hist. T. i. pp. 104 and 587, T. ii. pp. 355 and 367.)

I have already remarked elsewhere (Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 191; English
edition, p. 156), that Onesicritus and the other companions of
Alexander, while they make no allusion to the tall arborescent ferns,
speak of the fan-leaved umbrella palm, and of the delicate and always
fresh verdure of the cultivated plantains or bananas. Among the
Sanscrit names given by Amarasinha for the plantain or banana (the
Musa of botanists) there are bhanu-phala (sun-fruit), varana-buscha,
and moko. Phala signifies fruit in general. Lassen explains the words
of Pliny (xii. 6), “arbori nomen palæ, pomo arienæ” thus: “The Roman
mistook the word pala, fruit, for the name of the tree; and varana
(in the mouth of a Greek ouarana) became transformed into ariena.
The Arabic mauza may have been formed from moko, and hence our Musa.
Bhanu-fruit is not far from banana-fruit.” (Compare Lassen, Indische
Alterthumskunde, Bd. i. S. 262, with my Essai politique sur la Nouvelle
Espagne, T. ii. p. 382, and Rel. hist. T. i. p. 491.)

[17] p. 22--“_The form of Malvaceæ._”

Larger malvaceous forms begin to appear as soon as we have crossed
the Alps; at Nice and in Dalmatia, Lavatera arborea; and in Liguria,
Lavatera olbia. The dimensions of the Baobab, monkey-bread tree, have
been mentioned above, (Vol. ii. p. 90.) To this form are attached
the also botanically allied families of the Byttneriaceæ (Sterculia,
Hermannia, and the large-leaved Theobroma Cacao, in which the flowers
spring from the bark both of the trunk and the roots); the Bombaceæ
(Adansonia, Helicteres, and Cheirostemon); and lastly the Tiliaceæ
(Sparmannia Africana.) I may name more particularly as superb
representatives of the Mallow-form, our Cavanillesia platanifolia,
of Turbaco near Carthagena in South America, and the celebrated
Ochroma-like Hand-tree, the Macpalxochiquahuitl of the Mexicans, (from
_macpalli_, the flat hand), Arbol de las Manitas of the Spaniards, our
Cheirostemon platanoides; in which the long curved anthers project
beyond the fine purple blossom, causing it to resemble a hand or claw.
Throughout the Mexican States this one highly ancient tree is the only
existing individual of this extraordinary race: it is supposed to be a
stranger, planted about five centuries ago by the kings of Toluca. I
found the height above the sea where the Arbol de las Manitas stands
to be 8280 French (8824 English) feet. Why is there only a single
individual, and from whence did the kings of Toluca procure either
the young tree or the seed? It seems no less difficult to account
for Montezuma not having possessed it in his botanical gardens of
Huaxtepec, Chapoltepec, and Iztapalapan, of which Hernandez, the
surgeon of Philip II., was still able to avail himself, and of which
some traces remain even to the present day; and it seems strange that
it should not have found a place among the representations of objects
of natural history which Nezahualcoyotl, king of Tezcuco, caused to
be drawn half a century before the arrival of the Spaniards. It is
asserted that the Hand-tree exists in a wild state in the forests
of Guatimala. (Humboldt and Bonpland, Plantes équinoxiales, T. i.
p. 82, pl. 24; Essai polit. sur la Nouv. Esp., T. i. p. 98.) At the
equator we have seen two Malvaceæ, Sida Phyllanthos (Cavan), and Sida
pichinchensis, ascend, on the mountain of Antisana and the Volcano
Rucu-Pichincha, to the great elevations of 12600 and 14136 French
(13430 and 15066 English) feet. (See our Plantes équin., T. ii. p. 113,
pl. 116.) Only the Saxifraga boussingaulti (Brongn.) reaches, on the
slope of the Chimborazo, an altitude six or seven hundred feet higher.

[18] p. 22.--“_The Mimosa form._”

The finely feathered or pinnated leaves of Mimosas, Acacias,
Schrankias, and species of Desmanthus, are most truly forms of tropical
vegetation. Yet there are some representations of this form beyond the
tropics; in the northern hemisphere in the Old Continent I can indeed
cite but one, and that only in Asia, and a low-growing shrub, the
Acacia Stephaniana, according to Kunth’s more recent investigations a
species of the genus Prosopis. It is a social plant, covering the arid
plains of the province of Shirwan, on the Kur (Cyrus), as far as the
ancient Araxes. Olivier also found it near Bagdad. It is the Acacia
foliis bipinnatis mentioned by Buxbaum, and extends as far north as 42°
of latitude. (Tableau des Provinces situées sur la Côte occidentale de
la Mer Caspienne, entre les fleuves Terek et Kour, 1798, pp. 58 and
120.) In Africa the Acacia gummifera of Willdenow advances as far as
Mogador, or to 32° north latitude.

On the New Continent, the banks of the Mississipi and the Tennessee, as
well as the savannahs of Illinois, are adorned with Acacia glandulosa
(Michaux), and A. brachyloba (Willd). Michaux found the Schrankia
uncinata extend northwards from Florida into Virginia, or to 37° N.
latitude. Gleditschia tricanthos is found, according to Barton, on
the east side of the Alleghany mountains, as far north as the 38th
parallel, and on the west side even as far as the 41st parallel.
Gleditschia monosperma ceases two degrees farther to the south. These
are the limits of the Mimosa form in the northern hemisphere. In the
southern hemisphere we find beyond the tropic of Capricorn simple
leaved Acacias as far as Van Diemen Island; and even the Acacia
cavenia, described by Claude Gay, grows in Chili between the 30th and
37th degrees of south latitude. (Molina, Storia Naturale del Chili,
1782, p. 174.) Chili has no true Mimosa, but it has three species of
Acacia. Even in the north part of Chili the Acacia cavenia only grows
to a height of twelve or thirteen feet; and in the south, near the
sea coast, it hardly rises a foot above the ground. In South America,
north of the equator, the most excitable Mimosas were (next to Mimosa
pudica), M. dormiens, M. somnians, and M. somniculosa. Theophrastus
(iv. 3) and Pliny (xii. 10) mention the irritability of the African
sensitive plant; but I find the first description of the South American
sensitive plants (Dormideras) in Herrera, Decad. II. lib. iii. cap.
4. The plant first attracted the attention of the Spaniards in 1518,
in the savannahs on the isthmus near Nombre de Dios: “parece como
cosa sensible;” and it was said that the leaves (“de echura de una
pluma de pajaros”) only contracted on being touched with the finger,
and not if touched with a piece of wood. In the small swamps which
surround the town of Mompox on the Magdalena, we discovered a beautiful
aquatic Mimosacea (Desmanthus lacustris). It is figured in our Plantes
équinoxiales, T. i. p. 55, pl. 16. In the Andes of Caxamarca we found
two Alpine Mimoseæ (Mimosa montana and Acacia revoluta), 8500 and 9000
French (about 9060 and 9590 English) feet above the surface of the
Pacific.

Hitherto no true Mimosa (in the sense established by Willdenow), or
even Inga, has been found in the temperate zone. Of all Acacias, the
Oriental Acacia julibrissin, which Forskål has confounded with Mimosa
arborea, is that which supports the greatest degree of cold. In the
botanic garden of Padua there is in the open air a tree of this species
with a stem of considerable thickness, although the mean temperature of
Padua is below 10.°5 Reaumur (55°.6 Fahr.)

[19] p. 23--“_Heaths._”

In these physiognomic considerations we by no means comprise under
the name of Heaths the whole of the natural family of Ericaceæ, which
on account of the similarity and analogy of the floral parts includes
Rhododendron, Befaria, Gaultheria, Escallonia, &c. We confine ourselves
to the highly accordant and characteristic form of the species of
Erica, including Calluna (Erica) Vulgaris, L., the common heather.

While, in Europe, Erica carnea, E. tetralix, E. cinerea, and Calluna
vulgaris, cover large tracts of ground from the plains of Germany,
France, and England to the extremity of Norway, South Africa offers the
most varied assemblage of species. Only one species which is indigenous
in the southern hemisphere at the Cape of Good Hope, Erica umbellata,
is found in the northern hemisphere, _i. e._ in the North of Africa,
in Spain, and Portugal. Erica vagans and E. arborea also belong to the
two opposite coasts of the Mediterranean: the first is found in North
Africa, near Marseilles, in Sicily, Dalmatia, and even in England; the
second in Spain, Italy, Istria, and in the Canaries. (Klotsch on the
Geographical Distribution of species of Erica with persistent corollas,
MSS.) The common heather, Calluna vulgaris, is a social plant covering
large tracts from the mouth of the Scheldt to the western declivity
of the Ural. Beyond the Ural, oaks and heaths cease together: both
are entirely wanting in the whole of Northern Asia, and throughout
Siberia to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Gmelin (Flora Sibirica,
T. iv. p. 129) and Pallas (Flora Rossica, T. i. Pars 2, p. 58) have
expressed their astonishment at this disappearance of the Calluna
vulgaris,--a disappearance which, on the eastern declivity of the Ural
Mountains, is even more sudden and decided than might be inferred
from the expressions of the last-named great naturalist. Pallas says
merely: “ultra Uralense jugum sensim deficit, vix in Isetensibus
campis rarissime apparet, et ulteriori Sibiriæ plane deest.” Chamisso,
Adolph Erman, and Heinrich Kittlitz, have found Andromedas indeed in
Kamtschatka, and on the North West coast of America, but no Calluna.
The accurate knowledge which we now possess of the mean temperature
of several parts of Northern Asia, as well as of the distribution of
the annual temperature into the different seasons of the year, affords
no sort of explanation of the cessation of heather to the east of the
Ural Mountains. Joseph Hooker, in a note to his Flora Antarctica,
has treated and contrasted with great sagacity and clearness two very
different phenomena which the distribution of plants presents to us:
on the one hand, “uniformity of surface accompanied by a similarity of
vegetation;” and on the other hand, “instances of a sudden change in
the vegetation unaccompanied by any diversity of geological or other
features.” (Joseph Hooker, Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of the Erebus
and Terror, 1844, p. 210.) Is there any species of Erica in Central
Asia? The plant spoken of by Saunders in Turner’s Travels to Thibet
(Phil. Trans. Vol. lxxix. p. 86), as having been found in the Highlands
of Nepaul (together with other European plants, Vaccinium myrtillus and
V. oxycoccus) and described by him as Erica vulgaris, is believed by
Robert Brown to have been an Andromeda, probably Andromeda fastigiata
of Wallich. No less striking is the absence of Calluna vulgaris, and
of all the species of Erica throughout all parts of the Continent of
America, while the Calluna is found in the Azores and in Iceland. It
has not hitherto been seen in Greenland, but was discovered a few years
ago in Newfoundland. The natural family of the Ericaceæ is also almost
entirely wanting in Australia, where it is replaced by Epacrideæ.
Linnæus described only 102 species of the genus Erica; according to
Klotzsch’s examination, this genus really contains, after a careful
exclusion of all mere varieties, 440 true species.

[20] p. 4.--“_The Cactus form._”

If we take the natural family of the Opuntiaceæ separated from the
Grossulariaceæ (the species of Ribes), and, viewed as it is by Kunth
(Handbuch der Botanik, S. 609), we may well regard it as belonging
exclusively to America. I am aware that Roxburgh, in the Flora Indica
(inedita), cites two species of Cactus as belonging to South Eastern
Asia;--Cactus indicus and C. chinensis. Both are widely disseminated,
and are found in a wild state (whether they were originally wild
or have become so), and are distinct from Cactus opuntia and C.
coccinellifer; but it is remarkable that the Indian plant (Cactus
indicus) has no ancient Sanscrit name. Cactus chinensis has been
introduced in St. Helena as a cultivated plant. Now that a more general
interest has at length been awakened on the subject of the original
distribution of plants, future investigation will dispel the doubts
which have been felt in several quarters respecting the existence of
true Asiatic Opuntiaceæ. In the animal kingdom particular forms are
found to occur singly. Tapirs were long regarded as a form exclusively
characteristic of the New Continent; and yet the American tapir has
been found as it were repeated in that of Malacca (Tapirus indicus,
Cuv.)

Although the species of Cactus belong, generally speaking, more
properly to the tropical regions, yet some are indigenous in
the temperate zone, as on the Missouri and in Louisiana, Cactus
missuriensis and C. vivipara; and Back saw with astonishment the
shores of Rainy Lake, in north lat. 48° 40´, covered with C. opuntia.
South of the equator the species of Cactus do not extend beyond the
Rio Itata, in lat. 36°, and the Rio Biobio, in lat. 37° 15´. In the
part of the Andes which is situated between the tropics, I have seen
species of Cactus (C. sepium, C. chlorocarpus, C. bonplandii) growing
on elevated plains nine or ten thousand (French) feet (about 9590 and
10660 English) above the level of the sea; but a still more alpine
character is shewn in latitudes belonging to the temperate zone, in
Chili, by the Opuntia ovallei, which has yellow flowers and a creeping
stem. The upper and lower limits beyond which this plant does not
extend have been accurately determined by barometric measurement by
the learned botanist Claude Gay: it has never been found lower than
6330 French (6746 English) feet, and it reaches and even passes the
limits of perpetual snow, having been found on uncovered masses of rock
rising from amongst the snows. The last small plants were collected
on spots situated 12820 French (13663 English) feet above the level
of the sea. (Claudio Gay, Flora Chilensis, 1848, p. 30.) Some species
of Echino-cactus are also true alpine plants in Chili. A counterpart
to the fine-haired Cactus senilis is found in the thick-wooled Cereus
lanatus, called by the natives Piscol, which has handsome red fruit. We
found it in Peru, near Guancabamba, when on our journey to the Amazons
river. The dimensions of the different kinds of Cactaceæ (a group on
which the Prince of Salm-Dyck has been the first to throw great light)
offer great variety and contrasts. Echinocactus wislizeni, which is
4 feet high and 7 feet in circumference (4 feet 3 inches and 7 feet
5 inches English), is still only the third in size, being surpassed
by E. ingens (Zucc.) and by E. platyceras (Lem.) (Wislizenus, Tour
to Northern Mexico, 1848, p. 97.) The Echinocactus stainesii reaches
from 2 to 2-1/2 feet diameter; E. visnago, from Mexico, upwards of 4
English feet high, is above 3 English feet diameter, and weighs from
700 to 2000 lbs.: while Cactus nanus, which we found near Sondorillo,
in the province of Jaen, is so small that, being only slightly rooted
in the sand, it gets between the toes of dogs. The Melocactuses, which
are full of juice in the dryest seasons like the Ravenala of Madagascar
(forest-leaf in the language of the country, from _rave_, _raven_,
a leaf, and _ala_, the Javanese _halas_, a forest), are vegetable
fountains; and the manner in which the horses and mules stamp them
open with their hoofs, at the risk of injury from the spines, has been
already mentioned (Vol. I p. 19). Since the last quarter of a century
Cactus opuntia has extended itself in a remarkable manner into Northern
Africa, Syria, Greece, and the whole of the South of Europe; even
penetrating, in Africa, from the coasts far into the interior of the
country, and associating itself with the indigenous plants.

When one has been accustomed to see Cactuses only in our hothouses, one
is astonished at the degree of density and hardness which the ligneous
fibres attain in old cactus stems. The Indians know that cactus wood
is incorruptible, and excellent for oars and for the thresholds of
doors. There is hardly anything in vegetable physiognomy which makes so
singular and ineffaceable an impression on a newly arrived person, as
the sight of an arid plain thickly covered, like those near Cumana,
New Barcelona, and Coro, and in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros,
with columnar and candelabra-like divided cactus stems.

[21] p. 24.--“_Orchideæ._”

The almost animal shape of blossoms of Orchideæ is particularly
striking in the celebrated Torito of South America (our Anguloa
grandiflora); in the Mosquito (our Restrepia antennifera); in the Flor
del Espiritu Santo (also an Anguloa, according to Floræ Peruvianæ
Prodrom. p. 118, tab. 26); in the ant-like flower of the Chiloglottis
cornuta (Hooker, Flora antarctica, p. 69); in the Mexican Bletia
speciosa; and in the highly curious host of our European species
of Ophrys: O. muscifera, O. apifera, O. aranifera, O. arachnites,
&c. A predilection for this superbly flowering group of plants has
so increased, that the number cultivated in Europe by the brothers
Loddiges in 1848 has been estimated at 2360 species; while in 1843 it
was rather more than 1650, and in 1813 only 115. What a rich mine of
still unknown superb flowering Orchideæ the interior of Africa must
contain, if it is well watered! Lindley, in his fine work entitled “The
Genera and Species of Orchideous Plants,” described in 1840 precisely
1980 species; at the end of the year 1848 Klotzsch reckoned 3545
species.

While in the temperate and cold zones there are only “terrestrial”
Orchideæ, _i. e._ growing on and close to the ground, tropical
countries possess both forms, _i. e._ the “terrestrial” and the
“parasitic,” which grow on trunks of trees. To the first-named of
these two divisions belong the tropical genera Neottia, Cranichis,
and most of the Habenarias. We have also found both forms growing as
alpine plants on the slopes of the chain of the Andes of New Granada
and Quito: of the parasitical Orchideæ (Epidendreæ), Masdevallia
uniflora (at 9600 French, or about 10230 English feet); Cyrtochilum
flexuosum (at 9480 French, or about 10100 English feet); and Dendrobium
aggregatum (8900 French, or about 9480 English feet): and of the
terrestrial Orchideæ, the Altensteinia paleacea, near Lloa Chiquito,
at the foot of the Volcano of Pichincha. Claude Gay thinks that the
Orchideæ said to have been seen growing on trees in the Island of
Juan Fernandez, and even in Chiloe, were probably in reality only
parasitical Pourretias, which extend at least as far south as 40° S.
lat. In New Zealand we find that the tropical form of Orchideæ hanging
from trees extends even to 45° S. lat. The Orchideæ of Auckland’s and
Campbell’s Islands, however (Chiloglottis, Thelymitra, and Acianthus),
grow on the ground in moss. In the animal kingdom, one tropical form
at least advances much farther to the south. In Macquarie Island, in
lat. 54° 39´, nearer to the South Pole therefore than Dantsic is to the
North Pole, there is a native parrot. (See also the section Orchideæ in
my work de Distrib. geogr. Plant., pp. 241-247.)

[22] p. 25.--“_The Casuarinæ._”

Acacias which have phyllodias instead of leaves, some Myrtacesæ
(Eucalyptus, Metrosideros, Melaleuca, and Leptospermum), and
Casuarinas, give a uniform character to the vegetation of Australia
and Tasmania (Van Diemen Island). Casuarinas with their leafless,
thin, string-like, articulated branches, having the joints provided
with membranous denticulated sheaths, have been compared by travellers,
according to the particular species which fell under their observation,
either to arborescent Equisetaceæ (Horsetails) or to our Scotch firs.
(See Darwin, Journal of Researches, p. 449.) Near the coast of Peru
the aspect of small thickets of Colletia and Ephedra also produced on
my mind a singular impression of leaflessness. Casuarina quadrivalvis
advances, according to Labillardière, to 48° S. lat. in Tasmania. The
sad-looking Casuarina form is not unknown in India and on the east
coast of Africa.

[23] p. 25.--“_Needle-leaved trees._”

The family of Coniferæ holds so important a place by the number of
individuals, by their geographical distribution, and by the vast
tracts of country in the northern temperate zone covered with trees
of the same species living in society, that we are almost surprised
at the small number of species of which it consists,--even including
members which belong to it in essential respects, but deviate from it
in a degree by the shape of their leaves and their manner of growth
(Dammara, Ephedra, and Gnetum, of Java and New Guinea). The number
of known Coniferæ is not quite equal to three-fourths of the number
of described species of palms; and there are more known Aroideæ than
Coniferæ. Zuccarini, in his Beiträgen zur Morphologie der Coniferen
(Abhandl. der mathem. physikal. Classe der Akademie der Wiss. zu
München, Bd. iii. S. 752, 1837-1843), reckons 216 species, of which
165 belong to the northern and 51 to the southern hemisphere. Since my
researches these proportionate numbers must be modified, as, including
the species of Pinus, Cupressus, Ephedra, and Podocarpus, found by
Bonpland and myself in the tropical parts of Peru, Quito, New Granada,
and Mexico, the number of species between the tropics rises to 42. The
most recent and excellent work of Endlicher, Synopsis Coniferarum,
1847, contains 312 species now living, and 178 fossil species found in
the coal measures, the bunter-sandstone, the keuper, and the Jurassic
formations. The vegetation of the ancient world offers to us more
particularly forms which, by their simultaneous affinity with several
different families of the present vegetable world, remind us that many
intermediate links have perished. Coniferæ abounded in the ancient
world: their remains, belonging to an early epoch, are found especially
in association with Palms and Cycadeæ; but in the latest beds of
lignite we also find pines and firs associated as now with Cupuliferæ,
maples, and poplars. (Kosmos, Bd. i. S. 295-298, and 468-470; Engl.
edit. p. 271-274, and lxxxix.)

If the earth’s surface did not rise to considerable elevations within
the tropics, the highly characteristic form of needle-leaved trees
would be almost unknown to the inhabitants of the equatorial zone. In
common with Bonpland I have laboured much in the determination of the
exact lower and upper limits of the region of Coniferæ and of oaks in
the Mexican highlands. The heights at which both begin to grow (los
Pinales y Encinales, Pineta et Querceta) are hailed with joy by those
who come from the sea-coast, as indicating a climate where, so far as
experience has hitherto shewn, the deadly malady of the black vomit
(Vomito prieto, a form of yellow fever) does not reach. The lower limit
of oaks, and more particularly of the Quercus xalapensis (one of the
22 Mexican species of oak first described by us), is on the road from
Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico, a little below the Venta del Encero,
2860 (3048 E.) feet above the sea. On the western side of the highlands
between the city of Mexico and the Pacific, the limit is rather
lower down, for oaks begin to be found near a hut called Venta de la
Moxonera, between Acapulco and Chilpanzingo, at an absolute elevation
of 2328 (2480 E.) feet. I found a similar difference in the height of
the lower limit of pine woods on the two-sides of the continent. On
the Pacific side, in the Alto de los Caxones north of Quaxiniquilapa,
we found this limit for Pinus Montezumæ (Lamb.), which we at first
took for Pinus occidentalis (Swartz), at an elevation of 3480 (3709
E.) feet; while towards Vera Cruz, on the Cuesta del Soldado, pines
are first met with at a height of 5610 (5950 E.) feet. Therefore both
the kinds of trees spoken of above, oaks and pines, descend lower on
the side of the Pacific than they do on the side of the Antillean sea.
In ascending the Cofre di Perote, I found the upper limit of the oaks
9715 (10354 E.) feet, and that of the Pinus Montezumæ at 12138 (12936
E.) feet above the sea, or almost 2000 (2132 E.) feet higher than the
summit of Etna. Considerable quantities of snow had fallen at this
elevation in the month of February.

The more considerable the heights at which the Mexican Conifers are
first met with, the more striking it appears to find in the Island
of Cuba (where, indeed, on the borders of the torrid zone, northern
breezes sometimes cool the atmosphere down to 6-1/2° Reaumur, 46°.6
Fah.), another species of pine (P. occidentalis of Swartz), growing in
the plains or on the low hills of the Isla de Pinos, intermixed with
palms and mahogany trees (Swietenias). Columbus mentions a small pine
wood (Pinal) in the journal of his first voyage (Diario del 25 de Nov.
1492), near Cayo de Moya, on the north-east of the Island of Cuba.
In Hayti also, Pinus occidentalis descends from the mountains to the
sea-shore, near Cape Samana. The trunks of these Pines, carried by the
Gulf-stream to the Islands of Graciosa and Fayal in the Azores, were
among the chief indications from which the great discoverer inferred
the existence of unknown lands to the west. (See my Examen crit.,
T. ii. p. 246-259.) Is it true that in Jamaica, notwithstanding the
height of its mountains, Pinus occidentalis is entirely wanting? We
may also ask what is the species of Pinus found on the eastern coast
of Guatimala, as P. tenuifolia (Benth.) probably belongs only to the
mountains near Chinanta?

If we cast a general glance on the species which form the upper limits
of arborescent vegetation in the northern hemisphere, from the frigid
zone to the equator, we find, beginning with Lapland, that according to
Wahlenberg, on the Sulitelma Mountain (lat. 68°) it is not needle-trees
which form the upper limit, but that birches (Betula alba) extend much
higher up than Pinus sylvestris;--whilst in the temperate zone, in the
Alps (lat. 45-3/4°), Pinus picea (Du Roi) advances highest, leaving
the birches behind; and in the Pyrenees (lat. 42-1/2°), Pinus uncinata
(Ram.) and P. sylvestris var. rubra: within the tropics, in lat.
19°-20° in Mexico, Pinus Montezumæ leaves far behind Alnus toluccensis,
Quercus spicata, and Q. crassipes; while in the snow mountains of Quito
at the equator, Escallonia myrtilloides, Aralia avicennifolia, and
Drymis winteri, take the lead. The last-named tree, which is identical
with Drymis granatensis (Mut.) and Wintera aromatica (Murray),
presents, as Joseph Hooker has shewn (Flora Antarctica, p. 229), the
striking example of the uninterrupted extension of the same species of
tree from the most southern part of Tierra del Fuego and Hermit Island,
where it was discovered by Drake’s Expedition in 1577, to the northern
highlands of Mexico; or through a range of 86 degrees of latitude, or
5160 geographical miles. Where it is not birches (as in the far north),
but needle trees (as in the Swiss Alps and the Pyrenees), which form
the limit of _arborescent_ vegetation on the highest mountains, we find
above them, still nearer to the snowy summits which they gracefully
enwreath with their bright garlands, in Europe and Western Asia, the
Alp roses, the Rhododendra,--which are replaced on the Silla de Caracas
and in the Peruvian Paramo de Saraguru by the purple flowers of another
genus of Ericaceæ, the beautiful race of Befarias. In Lapland the
needle-trees are immediately followed by Rhododendron laponicum; in the
Swiss Alps by Rhododendron ferrugineum and R. hirsutum; in the Pyrenees
by the R. ferrugineum only; and in the Caucasus by R. caucasicum.
Decandolle found the Rhododendron ferrugineum growing singly in the
Jura (in the Creux de Vent) at the moderate altitude of 3100 to 3500
(3304 to 3730 E.) feet, 5600 (5968 E.) feet lower down than its proper
elevation. If we desire to trace the last zone of vegetation nearest to
the snow line in the tropics, we must name, from our own observations,
in the Mexican part of the tropical zone, Cnicus nivalis and Chelone
gentianoides; in the cold mountain regions of New Granada, the woolly
Espeletia grandiflora, E. corymbosa and E. argentea; and in the Andes
of Quito, Culcitium rufescens, C. ledifolium, and C. nivale,--yellow
flowering Compositæ which replace in the last-named mountains the
somewhat more northerly Espeletias of New Granada, to which they bear
a strong physiognomic resemblance. This replacement, the repetition
of resembling or almost similar forms in countries separated either
by seas or by extensive tracts of land, is a wonderful law of nature
which appears to prevail even in regard to some of the rarest forms of
vegetation. In Robert Brown’s family of the Rafflesieæ, separated from
the Cytineæ, the two Hydnoras described by Thunberg and Drege in South
Africa (H. africana and H. triceps) have their counterpart in South
America in Hydnora americana (Hooker).

Far above the region of alpine plants, grasses, and lichens, and even
above the limit of perpetual snow, the botanist sees with astonishment,
both in the temperate and tropical zones, isolated phænogamous plants
occur now and then sporadically on rocks which remain free from the
general surrounding snowy covering, and which may possibly be warmed
by heat ascending through open fissures. I have already spoken of
the Saxifraga boussingaulti, which is found on the Chimborazo at an
elevation of 14800 (15773 E.) feet; in the Swiss Alps, Silene acaulis
has been seen at a height of 10680 (11380 E.) feet, being in the
first-named case 600 (640 E.) feet, and in the second 2460 (2620 E.)
feet above the limit of the snows, that limit being taken as it was in
the two cases respectively at the time when the plants were found.

In our European Coniferæ, the Red and White Pine shew great and
remarkable differences in respect to their distribution. While
in the Swiss Alps the Red Pine (Pinus picea, Du Roi, foliis
compresso--tetragonis; unfortunately called by Linnæus, and by most of
the botanists of the present day, Pinus abies!) forms the upper limit
of arborescent vegetation at a mean height of 5520 (5883 English) feet,
only an occasional low growing mountain-alder (Alnus viridis, Dec.,
Betula viridis, Vill.) advancing now and then still nearer to the
snow-line; the White Pine (Pinus abies, Du Roi, Pinus picea, Linn.,
foliis planis, pectinatodistichis, emarginatis) ceases, according to
Wahlenberg, more than a thousand feet lower down. The Red Pine does not
appear at all in the South of Europe, in Spain, the Appennines, and
Greece; even on the northern slope of the Pyrenees it is seen only, as
Ramond remarks, at great elevations, and is entirely wanting in the
Caucasus. The Red Pine advances in Scandinavia farther to the north
than the White Pine, of which last-named tree there is in Greece (on
Mounts Parnassus, Taygetus, and Œta) a long needled variety (foliis
apice integris, breviter mucronatis), the Abies Apollinis of Link.
(Linnæa, Bd. xv. 1841, S. 529; and Endlicher, Synopsis Coniferarum, p.
96.)

On the Himalaya the Coniferæ are distinguished by the great thickness
and height of their trunks, and by the length of their leaves. The
Deodwara Cedar, Pinus deodara (Roxb.),--(properly, in Sanscrit,
dêwa-dâru, timber of the Gods),--which is from 12 to 13-1/2 feet
thick, is the great ornament of the mountains. It grows in Nepaul to
11000 (11720 E.) feet above the level of the sea. More than 2000 years
ago the Deodara supplied the materials for the fleet of Nearchus on
the Hydaspes (the present Behut). In the valley of Dudegaon, north
of the copper mines of Dhunpour in Nepaul, Dr. Hoffmeister, so early
lost to science, found the Pinus longifolia of Royle (the Tschelu
Pine) growing among tall stems of the Chamærops martiana of Wallich.
(Hoffmeister’s Briefe aus Indien während der Expedition des Prinzen
Waldemar von Preussen, 1847, S. 351.) Such an intermixture of pineta
and palmata had excited the surprise of the companions of Columbus in
the New Continent, as a friend and cotemporary of the Admiral, Petrus
Martyr Anghiera, has informed us. (Dec. iii. lib. 10, p. 68.) I saw
myself this intermixture of pines and palms for the first time on the
road from Acapulco to Chilpanzingo. The Himalaya, like the Mexican
highlands, has, besides Pines and Cedars, also the forms of Cypresses
(Cupressus torulosa, Don), of Yews (Taxus wallichiana, Zuccar.), of
Podocarpus (P. nereifolia, Robert Brown), and of Juniper (Juniperus
squamata, Don., and J. excelsa, Bieberst; Juniperus excelsa is also
found at Schipke in Thibet, in Asia Minor, in Syria, and in the Greek
Islands). Thuja, Taxodium, Larix, and Araucaria, are forms found in the
New Continent, but wanting in the Himalaya.

Besides the 20 species of Pines which we already know from Mexico,
the United States of North America, which in their present extent
reach to the Shores of the Pacific, have 45 described species, while
Europe has only 15. There is a similar difference in respect to Oaks:
_i. e._ greater variety of forms in the New Continent which extends
continuously through a greater extent of latitude. The recent very
exact researches of Siebold and Zuccarini have, however, completely
refuted the previous belief, that many European species of Pines extend
also across the whole of Northern Asia to the Islands of Japan, and
even grow there, interspersed, as Thunberg has stated, with genuine
Mexican species, the Weymouth Pine, Pinus Strobus of Linnæus. What
Thunberg took for European Pines are wholly different and distinct
species. Thunberg’s Red Pine (Pinus abies, Linn.) is P. polita, (Sieb.)
and is often planted near Buddhistic temples; his common Scotch Fir
(Pinus sylvestris) is P. Massoniana (Lamb.); his P. cembra (the German
and Siberian pine with eatable seeds) is P. parviflora (Sieb.); his
common Larch (P. larix) is P. leptolepis (Sieb.); and his supposed
Taxus baccata, the fruits of which are eaten by Japanese courtiers in
case of long-protracted court ceremonials, (Thunberg, Flora Japonica,
p. 275), constitutes a distinct genus, and is the Cephalotaxus drupacea
of Siebold. The Islands of Japan, notwithstanding the vicinity of
the Continent of Asia, have a very distinct character of vegetation.
Thunberg’s supposed Japanese Weymouth Pine, (Pinus Strobus) which
would offer an important phenomenon, is only a planted tree, and is
besides quite distinct from the American species of Pine. It is Pinus
korajensis (Sieb.), and has been brought to Nipon from the peninsula of
Corea, and from Kamtschatka.

Of the 114 species of the Genus Pinus with which we are at present
acquainted, not one belongs to the Southern Hemisphere, for the Pinus
merkusii described by Junghuhn and De Vriese belongs to the part of
the Island of Sumatra which is north of the Equator, to the district
of the Battas; and Pinus insularis (Endl.) although it was at first
given in Loudon’s Arboretum as P. timoriensis, really belongs to
the Philippines. Besides the Genus Pinus, the Southern hemisphere,
according to the present state of our now happily advancing knowledge
of the geography of plants, is entirely without species of Cupressus,
Salisburia (Gingko), Cunninghamia (Pinus lanceolota, Lamb.) Thuja,
(one of the species of which, Th. gigantea, Nutt., found on the banks
of the Columbia, has a height of above 180 Eng. feet), Juniperus,
and Taxodium (Mirbel’s Schubertia). I include the last-named genus
with the less hesitation, as a Cape of Good Hope plant (Sprengel’s
Schubertia capensis) is no Taxodium, but constitutes a genus of itself,
Widringtonia, (Endl.) in quite a different division of the family of
Coniferæ.

This absence, from the Southern Hemisphere, of true Abietineæ,
Juniperineæ, Cupressineæ, and all the Taxodineæ, as well as of
Torreya, Salisburia adiantifolia, and Cephalotaxus from among the
Taxineæ, recalls forcibly the obscurity which still prevails in the
conditions which have determined the original distribution of vegetable
forms, a distribution which cannot be sufficiently and satisfactorily
explained solely by similarity or diversity of soil, thermic relations,
or meteorological phenomena. I remarked long ago that the Southern
Hemisphere for example has many plants belonging to the natural family
of Rosaceæ, but not a single species of the genus Rosa. We learn from
Claude Gay that the Rosa chilensis described by Meyen is only a wild
variety of the Rosa centifolia (Linn.), which has been for thousands of
years a European plant. Such wild varieties, (_i. e._ varieties which
have become wild) occupy large tracts of ground in Chili, near Valdivia
and Osorno. (Gay, Flora Chilensis, p. 340.)

In the tropical region of the Northern hemisphere we also found only
one single native rose, our Rosa montezumæ, in the Mexican highlands
near Moran, at an elevation of 8760 (9336 Engl.) feet. It is one of
the singular phenomena in the distribution of plants, that Chili,
which has Palms, Pourretias, and many species of Cactus, has no Agave;
although A. americana grows luxuriantly in Roussillon, near Nice, near
Botzen and in Istria, having probably been introduced from the New
Continent since the end of the 16th century, and in America itself
forms a continuous tract of vegetation from Northern Mexico across the
isthmus of Panama to the Southern part of Peru. I have long believed
that Calceolarias were limited like Roses exclusively to one side of
the Equator; of the 22 species which we brought back with us, not one
was collected to the north of Quito and the Volcano of Pichincha; but
my friend Professor Kunth remarks that Calceolaria perfoliata, which
Boussingault and Captain Hall found at Quito, advances to New Granada,
and that this species, as well as C. integrifolia of Santa Fé de
Bogotá, were given by Mutis to the great Linnæus.

The species of Pinus which are so frequent in the tropical Antilles and
in the tropical mountains of Mexico do not pass the isthmus of Panama,
and are not found in the equally mountainous parts of the tropical
portion of South America, and in the high plains of New Granada, Pasto,
and Quito. I have been both in the plains and on the mountains from the
Rio Sinu, near the isthmus of Panama, to 12° S. lat.; and in this tract
of almost 1600 geographical miles the only forms of needle-trees which
I saw were a Taxus-like species of Podocarpus with stems 60 (64 Eng.)
feet high (Podocarpus taxifolia), growing in the Pass of Quindiu and in
the Paramo de Saraguru, in 4° 26´ north, and 3° 40´ south latitude; and
an Ephedra (E. americana) near Guallabamba, north of Quito.

Among the Coniferæ there are common to the northern and southern
hemispheres the genera Taxus, Gnetum, Ephedra, and Podocarpus. The
last-named genus was distinguished from Pinus long before L’Heritier
by Columbus himself, who wrote on the 25th of November, 1492: “Pinales
en la Serrania de Haiti que no llevan piñas, pero frutos que parecen
azeytunos del Axarafe de Sevilla.” (See my Examen crit. T. iii. p. 24.)
There are species of Taxus from the Cape of Good Hope to 61° N. lat. in
Scandinavia, or through more than 95 degrees of latitude; Podocarpus
and Ephedra extend almost as far. In Cupuliferæ, the species of oak
which we are accustomed to regard as a northern form do not indeed pass
beyond the equator in South America, but in the Indian Archipelago they
re-appear in the southern hemisphere in the Island of Java. To the
southern hemisphere belong exclusively ten genera of Coniferæ, of which
I will name here only the principal: Araucaria, Dammara (Agathis Sal.),
Frenela (with eighteen New Holland species), Dacrydium and Lybocedrus,
which is found both in New Zealand and at the Straits of Magellan. New
Zealand has one species of the genus Dammara (D. australis) and no
Araucaria. In New Holland in singular contrast the case is opposite.

Among tree vegetation, it is in the form of needle-trees that Nature
presents to us the greatest extension in length (longitudinal axis):
I say among tree vegetation, because, as we have already remarked,
among oceanic Algæ, Macrocystis pyrifera, which is found between the
coast of California and 68° S. lat., often attains from 370 to 400
(about 400 to 430 Eng.) feet in length. Of Coniferæ, (setting aside
the six Araucarias of Brazil, Chili, New Holland, Norfolk Island, and
New Caledonia), the loftiest are those which belong to the northern
temperate zone. As in the family of Palms we found the most gigantic,
the Ceroxylon andicola, above 180 French (192 English) feet high, in
the temperate mountain climate of the Andes, so the loftiest Coniferæ
belong, in the northern hemisphere, to the temperate north-west coast
of America and to the Rocky Mountains (lat. 40°-52°); and in the
southern hemisphere to New Zealand, Tasmania or Van Diemen Island,
the south of Chili and Patagonia (between 43° and 50° latitude). The
most gigantic forms belong to the genera of Pinus, Sequoia (Endl.),
Araucaria, and Dacrydium. I propose to name only those species which
not only attain but often exceed 200 French feet (213 Eng.) In order to
afford a standard of comparison, it should be remarked that in Europe
the tallest Red and White Pines, the latter especially, attain about
150 or 160 (160-170 Eng.) feet; that, for example, in Silesia the Pine
of the Lampersdorf Forest near Frankenstein enjoys great celebrity,
although, with a circumference of 17 English feet, its height is only
153 Prussian, or 148 French, or 158 English feet. (Compare Ratzeburg,
Forstreisen, 1844, S. 287.)

       *       *       *       *       *

Pinus grandis (Douglas) in New California attains 224 English feet.

Pinus frémontiana (Endl.), also in New California, probably attains
the same stature as the preceding. (Torrey and Frémont, Report of the
Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1844, p. 319.)

Dacrydium cupressinum (Solander), from New Zealand, 213 English feet.

Pinus lambertiana (Dougl.), in North-west America, 224-235 English feet.

Araucaria excelsa (R. Brown), the Cupressus columnaris of Forster, in
Norfolk Island and the surrounding rocky islets, 181-224 English feet.
The six species of Araucaria which have become known to us hitherto,
fall, according to Endlicher, into two groups:

_a._ The American group (Brazil and Chili): A. brasiliensis (Rich.),
between 15° and 25° 8. lat.; and A. imbricata (Pavon), between 35° and
50° S. lat., the latter growing to 234-260 English feet.

_b._ The Australian group: A. bidwilli (Hook.) and A. cunninghami
(Ait.) on the east side of New Holland; A. excelsa on Norfolk Island,
and A. cookii (R. Brown) in New Caledonia. Corda, Presl. Göppert, and
Endlicher, have already discovered five species of Araucarias belonging
to the ancient world in the lias, in chalk, and in beds of lignite
(Endlicher, Coniferæ fossiles, p. 301.).

Pinus Douglasii (Sabine), in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains and on
the banks of the Columbia River (north lat. 48°-52°). The meritorious
Scotch botanist from whom this tree is named perished in 1833 by a
dreadful death in collecting plants in the Sandwich Islands, where he
had arrived from New California. He fell inadvertently into a pit in
which a fierce bull belonging to the cattle which have become wild
had previously fallen, and was gored and trampled to death. By exact
measurement a stem of Pinus Douglasii was 57-1/2 English feet in girth
at 3 feet above the ground, and its height was 245 English feet. (See
Journal of the Royal Institution, 1826, p. 325.)

Pinus trigona (Rafinesque), on the western declivity of the Rocky
Mountains, described in Lewis and Clarke’s Travels to the Source of the
Missouri River and across the American Continent to the Pacific Ocean
(1804-1806), 1814, p. 456. This gigantic Fir was measured with great
care; the trunks were often 38 to 45 English feet in girth, 6 feet
above the ground: one tree was 300 English feet high, and the first 192
feet were without any division into branches.

Pinus Strobus grows in the eastern parts of the United States of North
America, especially on the east of the Mississipi; but it is found
again in the Rocky Mountains from the sources of the Columbia to Mount
Hood, or from 43° to 54° N. lat. It is called in Europe the Weymouth
Pine and in North America the White Pine: its ordinary height does
not exceed 160 to 192 Eng. feet, but several trees of 250 to 266 Eng.
feet have been seen in New Hampshire. (Dwight, Travels, Vol. i. p. 36;
and Emerson’s Report on the Trees and Shrubs growing naturally in the
Forests of Massachusetts, 1846, p. 60-66.)

Sequoia gigantea (Endl.), Condylocarpus (Sal.) from New California;
like Pinus trigona, about 300 English feet high.

       *       *       *       *       *

The nature of the soil, and the circumstances of heat and moisture on
which the nourishment of plants depend, no doubt influence the degree
to which they flourish, and the increase in the number of individuals
in a species; but the gigantic height attained by the trunks of a few
among the many other nearly allied species of the same genus, depends
not on soil or climate; but, in the vegetable as well as in the animal
kingdom, on a specific organisation and inherent natural disposition. I
will cite as the greatest contrast to the Araucaria imbricata of Chili,
the Pinus Douglasii of the Columbia River, and the Sequoia gigantea of
New California, which is from 245 to 300 Eng. feet in height,--not a
plant taken from among a vegetation stunted by cold either of latitude
or elevation, as is the case with the small Willow-tree, two inches in
height, (Salix arctica),--but a small phænogamous plant belonging to
the fine climate of the southern tropic in the Brazilian province of
Goyaz. The moss-like Tristicha hypnoïdes, from the monocotyledonous
family of the Podostemeæ, hardly reaches the height of 3 lines
(27/100ths, or less than three-tenths of an English inch.) “En
traversant le Rio Claro dans la Province de Goyaz,” says an excellent
observer, Auguste de St.-Hilaire, “j’aperçus sur une pierre une plante
dont la tige n’avoit pas plus de trois lignes de haut et que je pris
d’abord pour une mousse. C’étoit cependant une plante phanérogame, le
Tristicha hypnoïdes, pourvue d’organes sexuels comme nos chênes et les
arbres gigantesques qui à l’entour élevaient leur cimes majestueuses.”
(Auguste de St.-Hilaire, Morphologie Végétale, 1840, p. 98.)

Besides the height of their stems, the length, breadth, and position
of the leaves and fruit, the form of the ramification aspiring
or horizontal, and spreading out like a canopy or umbrella,--the
gradations of colour, from a fresh green or silvery grey to a
blackish-brown, all give to Coniferæ a peculiar physiognomy and
character. The needles of Douglas’s Pinus lambertiana from North-west
America are five French inches long; those of Pinus excelsa of Wallich,
on the southern declivity of the Himalaya, near Katmandoo, seven French
inches; and those of P. longifolia (Roxb.), from the mountains of
Kashmeer, above a French foot long. In one and the same species the
length of the leaves or needles varies in the most striking manner
from the influence of soil, air, and elevation above the level of
the sea. In travelling in an east and west direction through eighty
degrees of longitude (above 3040 geographical miles), from the mouth
of the Scheldt through Europe and the north of Asia to Bogoslowsk in
the northern Ural and Barnaul beyond the Obi, I have found differences
in the length of the needles of our common Fir (Pinus sylvestris) so
great, that sometimes a traveller may be misled by the shortness and
rigidity of the leaves, to think that he has discovered a new species
allied to the Mountain Pine, P. rotundata (Link), P. uncinata (Ram.)
Link has justly remarked (Linnæa, Bd. xv. 1841, S. 489) that such
instances may be regarded as transitions to Ledebour’s P. sibirica of
the Altai.

In the Mexican highlands I have looked with particular pleasure on the
delicate cheerful green of the Ahuahuete, Taxodium distichum (Rich.),
Cupressus disticha (Linn.), which, however, is much given to shedding
its leaves. In this tropical region the above-mentioned tree, (of which
the Aztec name signifies water-drum, from _atl_, water, and _huehuetl_,
a drum, the trunk swelling to a great thickness), flourishes 5400 and
7200 (5755 and 7673 English) feet above the level of the sea, while in
the United States of North America it is found in the low grounds of
the cypress swamps of Louisiana, in the 43d parallel. In the Southern
States of North America the Taxodium distichum (Cyprès chauve) reaches,
as in the Mexican highlands, the height of 120 (128 English) feet,
and the enormous thickness of 30 to 37 (32 to 39 English) feet, in
diameter measured near the ground. (Emerson, Report on the Forests,
pp. 49 and 101). The roots present the striking phenomenon of woody
excrescences which project from 3 to 4-1/2 feet above the earth,
and are conical and rounded, and sometimes tabular. Travellers have
compared these excrescences in places where they are very numerous to
the grave tablets in a Jewish burying-ground. Auguste de St. Hilaire
remarks with much acuteness:--“Ces excroissances du Cyprès chauve,
ressemblant à des bornes, peuvent être regardées comme des exostoses,
et comme elles vivent dans l’air, il s’en échapperoit sans doute des
bourgeons adventifs, si la nature du tissu des plantes conifères ne
s’opposoit au développement des germes cachés qui donnent naissance à
ces sortes de bourgeons.” (Morphologie végétale, p. 91). A singularly
enduring power of vitality in the roots of trees of this family is
shown by a phenomenon which has excited the attention of vegetable
physiologists, and appears to be of only very rare occurrence in other
dicotyledonous trees. The remaining stumps of White Pines which have
been cut down continue for several years to make fresh layers of wood,
and to increase in thickness, without putting forth new shoots, leaves,
or branches. Göppert believes that this only takes place by means of
root nourishment received by the stump from a neighbouring living tree
of the same species; the roots of the living individual which has
branches and leaves having become organically united with those of the
cut tree by their having grown together. (Göppert, Beobachtungen über
das sogenannte Umwallen der Tannenstöcke, 1842, S. 12). Kunth, in his
excellent new “Lehrbuch der Botanik,” objects to this explanation of
a phenomenon which was known, imperfectly, so early as Theophrastus.
(Hist. Plant. lib. iii. cap. 7, pp. 59 and 60, Schneider.) He considers
the case to be analogous to what takes place when metal-plates, nails,
carved letters, and even the antlers of stags, become enclosed in the
wood of a growing tree. “The cambium, _i. e._ the viscid secretion
out of which new elementary organs are constructed either of woody or
cellular tissue, continues, without reference to the buds (and quite
apart from them), to deposit new layers of wood on the outermost layer
of the ligneous substance.” (Th. i. S. 143 and 166.)

The relations which have been alluded to, between elevation above
the level of the sea and geographical and thermal latitude, manifest
themselves often when we compare the tree vegetation of the tropical
part of the chain of the Andes with the vegetation of the north-west
coast of America, or with that of the shores of the Canadian Lakes.
Darwin and Claude Gay have made the same remark in the Southern
Hemisphere, in advancing from the high plains of Chili to Eastern
Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, where they found Drymis winteri and
forests of Fagus antarctica and Fagus forsteri forming a uniform
covering throughout long continuous lines running from north to
south and descending to the low grounds. We find even in Europe
small deviations (dependent on local causes which have not yet been
sufficiently examined), from the law of constant ratio as regards
stations or habitat of plants between elevation above the sea and
geographical latitude. I would recall the limits, in respect to
elevation, of the birch and the common fir in a part of the Swiss
Alps, on the Grimsel. The fir (Pinus sylvestris) extends to 5940, and
the birch (Betula alba) to 6480 French (6330 and 6906 English) feet;
above the birches there is a higher line of Pinus cembra, whose upper
limit is 6890 (7343 English) feet. Here, therefore, we have the birch
intervening between two zones of Coniferæ. According to the excellent
observations of Leopold Von Buch, and the recent ones of Martins,
who also visited Spitzbergen, the following geographical limits were
found in Lapland:--Pinus sylvestris extends to 70°; Betula alba to
70° 40´; and Betula nana quite up to 71°; Pinus cembra is altogether
wanting in Lapland. (Compare Unger über den Einfluss des Bodens auf
die Vertheilung der Gewächse, S. 200; Lindblom, Adnot. in geographicam
plantarum intra Sueciam distributionem, p. 89; Martins, in the Annales
des Sciences naturelles, T. xviii. 1842, p. 195).

If the length and arrangement of the needle-shaped leaves go far to
determine the physiognomic character of Coniferæ, this character is
still more influenced by the specific differences in the breadth
of the needles, and the degree of development of the parenchyma of
the appendicular organs. Several species of Ephedra may be called
almost leafless; but in Taxus, Araucaria, Dammara (Agathis), and the
Salisburia adiantifolia of Smith (Gingko biloba, Linn.), the surfaces
of the leaves become gradually broader. I have here placed the
genera in morphological succession. The specific names first chosen
by botanists testify in favour of such a succession. The Dammara
orientalis of Borneo and Java, often above ten feet in diameter,
was first called loranthifolia; and Dammara australis (Lamb.) of
New Zealand, which is 140 (149 English) feet high, was first called
zamæfolia. In both these species of trees the leaves are not needles,
but “folia alterna oblongo-lanceolata, opposita, in arbore adultiore
sæpe alterna, enervia, striata.” The under surface of the leaves is
thickly set with porous openings. This passage or transition of the
appendicular system from the greatest contraction to a broad-leaved
surface, like all progression from simple to compound, has at once a
morphological and a physiognomic interest (Link, Urwelt, Th. I. 1834,
S. 201-211). The short-stalked, broad, cleft leaf of the Salisburia
(Kämpfer’s Gingko) has also its breathing pores only on the under side
of the leaf. The original native country of this tree is unknown to us.
By the connection and intercourse of Buddhistic communities it early
passed from the temple-gardens of China to those of Japan.

In travelling from a port on the Pacific to Mexico, on our way to
Europe, I witnessed the singular and painful impression which the first
sight of a pine forest near Chilpanzingo made on one of our companions,
who, born at Quito under the equinoctial line, had never seen needle
trees, or trees with “folia acerosa.” It seemed to him as if the trees
were leafless; and he thought that as we were travelling towards the
cold North, he already recognised in this extreme contraction of the
vegetable organs the chilling and impoverishing influence of the pole.
The traveller whose impressions I here describe, whose name neither my
friend Bonpland or myself can pronounce without regret, was Don Carlos
Montufar (son of the Marquis of Selvalegre), an excellent young man,
whose noble and ardent love of freedom led him a few years later, in
the war of independence of the Spanish Colonies, to meet courageously a
violent death, of which the dishonour did not fall on him.

[24] p. 26.--“_The Pothos-form, Aroideæ._”

Caladium and Pothos are exclusively forms of the tropical world; the
species of Arum belong more to the temperate zone. Arum italicum, A.
dracunculus, and A. tenuifolium, extend to Istria and Friuli. No Pothos
has yet been discovered in Africa. India has some species of this genus
(Pothos scandens and P. pinnata) which are less beautiful in their
physiognomy, and less luxuriant in their growth, than the American
species. We discovered a beautiful and truly arborescent member of the
group of Aroideæ (Caladium arboreum) having stems from 16 to 21 English
feet high, not far from the convent of Caripe, to the East of Cumanas.
A very curious Caladium (Culcasia scandens) has been discovered by
Beauvois in the kingdom of Benin. (Palisot de Beauvois, Flore d’Oware
et de Benin, T. i. 1804, p. 4, pl. iii.) In the Pothos-form the
parenchyma is sometimes so much extended that the surface of the leaf
is interrupted by holes as in Calla pertusa (Kunth), and Dracontium
pertusum (Jacquin), which we collected in the woods round Cumana.
The Aroideæ first led attention to the remarkable phenomenon of the
fever-heat, which in certain plants is sensible by the thermometer
during the development of their inflorescence, and which is connected
with a great and temporary increase of the absorption of oxygen from
the atmosphere. Lamarck remarked in 1789 this increase of temperature
at the time of flowering in Arum italicum. According to Hubert and Bory
de St. Vincent the vital heat of Arum cordifolium in the Isle of France
was found to rise to 35°and 39° Reaumur, (110°.6 and 119°.6 Fahr.)
while the temperature of the surrounding air was only 15°.2 R. (66°.2
F.) Even in Europe, Becquerel and Breschet found as much as 17-1/2°
difference, Reaumur (39°.4 Fahr.) Dutrochet remarked a paroxysm, an
alternate decrease and increase of vital heat, which appeared to reach
a double maximum in the day. Théodore de Saussure observed analogous
augmentations of temperature, though to a less amount, only from 0°.5
to 0°.8 of Reaumur’s scale (1°.15 to 1°.8 Fahr.), in plants belonging
to other families; for example, in Bignonia radicans and Cucurbita
pepo. In the latter plant the use of a very sensitive thermoscope shews
that the increase of temperature is greater in the male than in the
female plant. Dutrochet, who previous to his early death made such
meritorious researches in physics and in vegetable physiology, found by
means of thermo-magnetic multiplicators (Comptes rendus de l’Institut,
T. viii. 1839, p. 454, T. ix. p. 614 and 781) an increase of vital heat
from 0°.1 to 0°.3 Reaumur, (0°.25 to 0°.67 Fahr.) in several young
plants (Euphorbia lathyris, Lilium candidum, Papaver somniferum), and
even among funguses in several species of Agaricus and Lycoperdon.
This vital heat disappeared at night, but was not prevented by placing
the plants in the dark during the day-time.

A yet more striking physiognomic contrast than that of Casuarineæ,
Needle trees, and the almost leafless Peruvian Colletias, with
Aroideæ, is presented by the comparison of those types of the greatest
contraction of the leafy organs with the Nymphæaceæ and Nelumboneæ. We
find in these as in the Aroideæ, leaves, in which the cellular tissue
forming their surface is extended to an extreme degree, supported on
long fleshy succulent leaf-stalks; as in Nymphæa alba; N. lutea; N.
thermalis (once called N. lotus, from the hot spring of Pezce near
Groswardein, in Hungary); the species of Nelumbo; Euryale amazonica
of Pöppig; and the Victoria Regina discovered in 1837 by Sir Robert
Schomburgk in the River Berbice in British Guiana, and which is
allied to the prickly Euryale, although, according to Lindley, a very
different genus. The round leaves of this magnificent water plant are
six feet in diameter, and are surrounded by turned up margins 3 to
5 inches high, light green inside, and bright crimson outside. The
agreeably perfumed flowers, twenty or thirty blossoms of which may
be seen at the same time within a small space, are white and rose
coloured, 15 inches in diameter, and have many hundred petals. (Rob.
Schomburgk, Reisen in Guiana und am Orinoko, 1841, S. 233.) Pöppig
also gives to the leaves of his Euryale amazonica which he found near
Tefe, as much as 5 feet 8 inches French, or 6 English feet, diameter.
(Pöppig, Reise in Chile, Peru und auf dem Amazonenstrome, Bd. ii. 1836,
S. 432.) If Euryale and Victoria are the genera which present the
greatest extension in all dimensions of the parenchyma of the _leaves_,
the greatest known dimensions of a _flower_ belong to a parasitical
Cytinea, the Rafflesia Arnoldi (R. Brown), discovered by Dr. Arnold
in Sumatra, in 1818: it has a stemless flower of three English feet
diameter, surrounded by large leaf-like scales. Fungus-like, it has an
animal smell, resembling beef.

[25] p. 26.--“_Lianes, rope-plants_, (_‘Bush ropes;’ in Spanish,
Vejuccos._”)

According to Kunth’s division of the Bauhinieæ, the true genus Bauhinia
belongs to the New Continent: the African Bauhinia, B. rufescens,
(Lam.) is a Pauletia (Cav.) a genus of which we found some new species
in South America. So also the Banisterias, from among the Malpighiaceæ,
are properly an American form; although two species are natives of
India, and one species, Banisteria leona, described by Cavanilles, is
a native of Western Africa. Within the tropics and in the Southern
Hemisphere we find among the most different families of plants the
twining rope-like climbers which in those regions render the forests at
once so impenetrable to man, and on the other hand so accessible and
habitable to the Quadrumanæ (or Monkeys) and to the Cercoleptes and
the small tiger-cats. The rapid ascent to the tops of lofty trees, the
passage from tree to tree, and even the crossing of streams by whole
herds or troops of gregarious animals, are all greatly facilitated by
these twining plants or Lianes.

In the South of Europe and in North America, Hops from among the
Urticeæ, and the species of Vitis from among the Ampelideæ, belong
to the class of twining climbers, and between the tropics we find
climbing Grasses or Gramineæ. We have seen in the plains of Bogota, in
the pass of Quindiu, in the Andes, and in the Quina-producing forests
of Loxa, a Bambusacea allied to Nastus, our Chusquea scandens, twine
round massive and lofty trunks of trees adorned at the same time with
flowering Orchideæ. The Bambusa scandens (Tjankorreh), which Blume
found in Java, belongs probably either to the genus Nastus or to that
of Chusquea, the Carrizo of the Spanish settlers. Twining plants
appear to me to be entirely absent in the Pine-woods of Mexico, but
in New Zealand, besides the Ripogonum parviflorum of Robert Brown, (a
climber belonging to the Smilaceæ which renders the forests almost
impenetrable), the sweet-smelling Freycinetia Banksii, which belongs to
the Pandaneæ, twines round a gigantic Podocarpus 220 English feet high,
the P. dacryoides (Rich), called in the native language Kakikatea.
(Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, 1843, Vol. i. p. 426.)

With climbing Gramineæ and Pandaneæ are contrasted by their beautiful
and many-coloured blossoms the Passifloras (among which, however, we
even found an arborescent self-supporting species, Passiflora glauca,
growing in the Andes of Popayan, at an elevation of 9840 French (10487
English) feet);--the Bignoniaceæ, Mutisias, Alströmerias, Urvilleæ,
and Aristolochias. Among the latter our Aristolochia cordata has
a crimson-coloured flower of 17 English inches diameter! “flores
gigantei, pueris mitræ instar inservientes.” Many of these twining
plants have a peculiar physiognomy and appearance produced by the
square shape of their stems, by flattenings not caused by any external
pressure, and by riband-like wavings to and fro. Cross sections of
Bignonias and Banisterias shew cruciform or mosaic figures produced
by the mutual pressure and interpenetration of the stems which twine
around each other. (See very accurate drawings in Adrien de Jussieu’s
Cours de Botanique, p. 77-79, fig. 105-108.)

[26] p. 27.--“_The form of Aloës._”

To this group of plants, characterised by so great a similarity of
physiognomy, belong; Yucca aloifolia, which extends as far north as
Florida and South Carolina; Y. angustifolia (Nutt.) which advances as
far as the banks of the Missouri; Aletris arborea; the Dragon-tree
of the Canaries and two other Dræcænas from New Zealand; arborescent
Euphorbias; Aloë dichotoma (Linn.) (formerly the genus Rhipidodendrum
of Willdenow); and the celebrated Koker-boom of Southern Africa with a
trunk twenty-one feet high and above four feet thick, and a top of 400
(426 Engl.) feet in circumference. (Patterson, Reisen in das Land der
Hottentotten und der Kaffern, 1790, S. 55.) The forms which I have thus
brought together belong to very different families: to the Liliaceæ,
Asphodeleæ, Pandaneæ, Amaryllideæ, and Euphorbiaceæ; all, however,
with the exception of the last, belonging to the great division of
the Monocotyledones. A Pandanea, Phytelephas macrocarpa (Ruiz,) which
we found in New Granada on the banks of the Magdalena, with its
pinnated leaves, quite resembles in appearance a small palm-tree. This
Phytelephas, of which the Indian name is Tagua, is besides, as Kunth
remarks, the only one of the Pandaneæ found (according to our present
knowledge) in the New Continent. The singular Agave-like and at the
same time very tall-stemmed Doryanthes excelsa of New South Wales,
which was first described by the acutely observing Correa de Serra, is
an Amaryllidea, like our low-growing Narcissuses and Jonquils.

In the Candelabra shape of plants of the Aloë form, we must not
confound the branches of an arborescent stem with flower-stalks. It
is the latter which in the American Aloë (Agave Americana, Maguey
de Cocuyza, which is entirely wanting in Chili) as well as in the
Yucca acaulis, (Maguey de Cocuy) presents in the rapid and gigantic
development of the inflorescence a candelabrum-like arrangement of the
flowers which, as is well known, is but too transient a phenomenon.
In some arborescent Euphorbias, on the other hand, the physiognomic
effect is given by the branches and their division, or by ramification
properly so called. Lichtenstein, in his “Reisen im südlichen Africa”
(Th. i. S. 370), gives a vivid description of the impression made upon
him by the appearance of a Euphorbia officinarum which he found in the
“Chamtoos Rivier,” in the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope; the form of
the tree was so symmetrical that the candelabrum-like arrangement was
regularly repeated on a smaller scale in each of the subdivisions of
the larger branches up to 32 English feet high. All the branches were
armed with sharp spines.

Palms, Yuccas, Aloes, tall-stemmed Ferns, some Aralias, and the
Theophrasta where I have seen it growing luxuriantly, different as they
are in the structure of their flowers, yet offer to the eye in the
nakedness (absence of branches) of their stems, and in the ornamental
character of their tops or crowns, a certain degree of physiognomic
resemblance.

The Melanoselinum decipiens (Hofm.), which is sometimes upwards
of 10 or 12 feet high, and which has been introduced into our
gardens from Madeira, belongs to a peculiar group of arborescent
umbelliferous plants to which Araliaceæ are otherwise allied, and
with which other plants which will doubtless be discovered in course
of time will be associated. Ferula, Heracleum, and Thapsia, do indeed
attain a considerable height, but they are still herbaceous plants.
Melanoselinum is still almost entirely alone as an umbelliferous
tree; Bupleurum (Tenonia) fruticosum (Linn.) of the shores of the
Mediterranean; Bubon galbanum of the Cape, and Crithmum maritimum
of our sea-shores, are only shrubs. On the other hand, the tropical
zone, in which, according to the old and very just remark of Adanson,
Umbelliferæ and Cruciferæ are almost entirely wanting in the plains,
presented to us on the high ridges of the American Andes the smallest
and most dwarf-like of all umbelliferous plants. Among 38 species of
plants which we collected at elevations where the mean temperature is
below 10° Reaumur (54°.5 Fah.), there vegetate almost like mosses, and
as if they made part of the rock and of the often frozen earth, at an
elevation of 12600 (13430 English) feet above the level of the sea,
Myrrhis andicola, Fragosa arctioïdes, and Pectophytum pedunculare,
intermingled with which there is an equally dwarfed Alpine Draba. The
only umbelliferous plants growing in the low grounds within the tropics
observed by us in the New Continent were two species of Hydrocotyle (H.
umbellata and H. leptostachya) between Havannah and Batabano; therefore
at the extreme limits of the torrid Zone.

[27] p. 27--“_The form of Gramineæ._”

The group of arborescent grasses which Kunth, in his able treatise
on the plants collected by Bonpland and myself, has combined under
the name of Bambusaceæ, is among the most beautiful adornments of
the tropical world. (Bambu, also called Mambu, is a word in the
Malay language, but appears according to Buschmann to be of doubtful
origin, as the usual Malay expression is buluh, in Java and Madagascar
wuluh, voulu.) The number of genera and species which form this
group has been extraordinarily augmented by the zeal of botanists.
It is now recognised that the genus Bambusa is entirely wanting in
the New Continent, to which on the other hand Guadua, from 50 to 60
French or about 53 to 64 English feet high, discovered by us, and
Chusquea, exclusively belong; that Arundinaria (Rich) is common to
both continents, although the species are different; that Bambusa and
Beesha (Rheed.) are found in India and the Indian Archipelago, and
Nastus in the Island of Bourbon, and in Madagascar. With the exception
of the tall-climbing Chusquea the forms which have been named may be
said to replace each other morphologically in the different parts of
the world. In the northern hemisphere, in the valley of the Mississipi,
the traveller is gratified, long before reaching the tropics, with
the sight of a form of bamboo, the Arundinaria macrosperma, formerly
called also Miegia, and Ludolfia. In the Southern Hemisphere Gay has
discovered a Bambusacea, (a still undescribed species of Chusquea,
21 English feet high, which does not climb, but is arborescent and
self-supporting) growing in southern Chili between the parallels of 37°
and 42° S. latitude; where, intermixed with Drymis chilensis, a uniform
forest covering of Fagus obliqua prevails.

While in India the Bambusa flowers so abundantly that in Mysore and
Orissa the seeds are mixed with honey and eaten like rice, (Buchanan,
Journey through Mysore, Vol. ii. p. 341, and Stirling in the Asiat.
Res. Vol. xv, p. 205) in South America the Guadua flowers so rarely,
that in four years we were only twice able to procure blossoms; once
on the unfrequented banks of the Cassiquiare, (the arm which connects
the Orinoco with the Rio Negro and the Amazons River,) and once in the
province of Popayan between Buga and Quilichao. It is striking to see
plants in particular localities grow with the greatest vigour without
producing flowers: it is thus with European olive trees which have
been planted for centuries between the tropics near Quito, 9000 (about
9590 English) feet above the level of the sea, and also in the Isle of
France with Walnut-trees, Hazel-nuts, and, as at Quito, olive trees
(Olea europea): see Bojer, Hortus Mauritianus, 1837, p. 291.

As some of the Bambusaceæ (arborescent grasses) advance into the
temperate zone, so within the tropics they do not suffer from
the temperate climate of the mountains. They certainly grow more
luxuriantly as social plants from the sea coast to the height of about
2560 English feet; for example, in the province de las Esmeraldas, west
of the Volcano of Pichincha, where Guadua angustifolia (Bambusa Guadua
in our Plantes équinoxiales, T. i. Tab. xx.) produces in its interior
much of the siliceous Tabaschir (Sanscrit _tvakkschira_, ox-milk). In
the pass of Quindiu we saw the Guadua growing at an elevation which we
found by barometric measurement to be 5400 (5755 English) feet above
the level of the Pacific. Nastus borbonicus is called by Bory de St.
Vincent a true Alpine plant; he states that it does not descend lower
on the declivity of the Volcano in the Island of Bourbon than 3600
(3837 English) feet. This recurrence or repetition as it were at great
elevations of the forms characteristic of the hot plains, recalls the
mountain group of palms before pointed out by me (Kunthia Montana,
Ceroxylon andicola, and Oreodoxa frigida), and a grove or thicket of
Musaceæ sixteen English feet high (Heliconia, perhaps Maranta), which I
found growing isolated at an elevation of 6600 (7034 English) feet, on
the Silla de Caraccas. (Rélation hist. T. i. p. 605-606.) As, with the
exception of a few isolated herbaceous dicotyledones, grasses form the
highest zone of phænogamous vegetation round the snowy summits of lofty
mountains, so also, in advancing in a horizontal direction towards
either pole of the Earth, the phænogamous vegetation terminates with
grasses.

To my young friend Joseph Hooker, who, but just returned with Sir
James Ross from the frozen antarctic regions, is now exploring the
Thibetian portion of the Himalaya, the geography of plants is indebted
not only for a great mass of important materials, but also for
excellent general deductions. He calls attention to the circumstance
that phænogamous flowering plants (grasses) approach 17-1/2° nearer
to the Northern than to the Southern pole. In the Falkland Islands
near the thick masses of Tussack grass (Dactylis cæspitosa, Forster,
according to Kunth a Festuca), and in Tierra del Fuego or Fuegia,
under the shade of the birch-leaved Fagus antarctica, there grows the
same Trisetum subspicatum which extends over the whole range of the
Peruvian Cordilleras, and over the Rocky Mountains to Melville Island,
Greenland, and Iceland, and which is also found in the Swiss and
Tyrolese Alps, in the Altai mountains, in Kamtschatka, and in Campbell
Island, south of New Zealand; therefore, from 54° South to 74-1/2°
North latitude, or through 128-1/2° of latitude. “Few grasses,” says
Joseph Hooker, in his Flora Antarctica, p. 97, “have so wide a range
as Trisetum subspicatum, (Beauv.) nor am I acquainted with any other
Arctic species which is equally an inhabitant of the opposite polar
regions.” The South Shetland Islands, which are divided by Bransfield
Strait from D’Urville’s Terre de Louis Philippe and the Volcano of
Haddington Peak, situated in 64° 12´ South latitude and 7046 English
feet high, have been very recently visited by a Botanist from the
United States of North America, Dr. Eights. He found there (probably in
62° or 62-1/4°, S. latitude) a small grass, Aira antarctica (Hooker,
Icon. Plant. Vol. ii. Tab. 150) which is “the most antarctic flowering
plant hitherto discovered.”

In Deception Island, of the same group, S. lat. 62° 50´, lichens only
are found, and not a single species of grass; and so also farther to
the south-east, in Cockburn Island (lat. 64° 12´), near Palmer’s Land,
there were only found Lecanoras, Lecideas, and five Mosses, among which
was our German Bryum argenteum: “this seems to be the ultima Thule of
antarctic vegetation.” Farther to the south, _land_-cryptogamic, as
well as phænogamic, vegetation is entirely wanting. In the great bay
formed by Victoria Land, on a small island which lies opposite to Mount
Herschel (S. lat. 71° 49´), and in Franklin Island, 92 geographical
miles North of the great volcano Mount Erebus, 12400 English feet high
(latitude 76° 7´ South), Hooker found not a single trace of vegetable
life. It is quite different in respect to the extension even of the
forms of higher vegetable organisation in the high northern latitudes.
Phænogamous plants there approach 18-1/2° nearer to the pole than in
the southern hemisphere: Walden Island (N. lat. 80-1/2°) has still
ten species. The antarctic phænogamous vegetation is also poorer in
species at corresponding distances from the pole (Iceland has five
times as many flowering plants as the southern group of Auckland and
Campbell Islands), but this less varied antarctic vegetation is from
climatic reasons more luxuriant and succulent. (Compare Hooker, Flora
antarctica, p. vii., 74, and 215, with Sir James Ross, Voyage in the
Southern and Antarctic Regions, 1839-1843, Vol. ii. p. 335-342.)

[28] p. 28.--“_Ferns._”

If, with a naturalist deeply versed in the knowledge of the Agamæ,
Dr. Klotzsch, we estimate the whole number of cryptogamic species
hitherto described at 19000, this gives to Fungi 8000 (of which the
Agarici constitute 1-8th); Lichens, according to J. von Flotow of
Hirschberg, and Hampe of Blankenburg, at least 1400; Algæ 2580; Mosses
and Liver-worts, according to Carl Müller of Halle, and Dr. Gottsche
of Hamburgh, 3800; and Ferns 3250. We are indebted for this last
important result to the thorough investigation of all that is known
concerning this group of plants by Professor Kunze of Leipsic. It is
remarkable that of the entire number of described Filices the family of
Polypodiaceæ, alone, comprises 2165 species; while other forms, even
Lycopodiaceæ and Hymenophyllaceæ, only count 350 and 200. There are,
therefore, almost as many described ferns as described grasses.

It is remarkable that in the ancient classic writers, Theophrastus,
Dioscorides, and Pliny, no notice occurs of the beautiful form of
arborescent ferns; while from information derived from the companions
of Alexander, Aristobulus, Megasthenes, and Nearchus, mention is made
of Bamboos “quæ fissis internodiis lembi vice vectitabant navigantes;”
of the Indian trees “quarum folia non minora clypeo sunt;” of the
fig-tree of which the branches take root round the parent stem; and of
Palms “tantæ proceritatis, ut sagittis superjici nequeant.” (Humboldt,
de Distributione geogr. Plantarum, p. 178 and 213.) I find the first
description of tree-ferns in Oviedo’s Historia de las Indias, 1535,
fol. xc. This experienced traveller, who had been placed by Ferdinand
the Catholic as director of the gold-washings in Hayti, says: “Among
the many ferns there are some which I reckon among trees, for they are
as thick and as tall as pines (Helechos que yo cuento por arboles,
tan gruesos como grandes pinos y muy altos). They grow chiefly in the
mountains and where there is much water.” The height is exaggerated.
In the dense forests round Caripe even our Cyathea speciosa only
attains a height of 30 to 35 (32 to 37 English) feet; and an excellent
observer, Ernst Dieffenbach, in the northernmost of the three islands
of New Zealand saw no stems of Cyathea dealbata of more than 40 (42-1/2
English) feet in height. In the Cyathea speciosa and the Meniscium of
the Chaymas missions we observed, in the midst of the shadiest primeval
forest, in very luxuriantly growing individuals, the scaly stems
covered with a shining carbonaceous powder. It seemed like a singular
decomposition of the fibrous parts of the old frond stalks. (Humboldt,
Rel. hist. T. i. p. 437.)

Between the tropics, where, on the declivities of the Cordilleras,
climates are placed successively in stages one above another, the
proper zone of the tree-ferns is between three and five thousand feet
(about 3200 and 5330 English) above the level of the sea. In South
America and in the Mexican highlands they seldom descend lower towards
the plains than 1200 (about 1280 Eng.) feet. The mean temperature
of this happy zone falls between 17° and 14°.5 Reaumur (70°.2 and
64°.6 Fahr.) This region enters the lowest stratum of clouds, or
that which floats next above the sea and the plains; and hence,
besides great equality of temperature, it also enjoys uninterruptedly
a high degree of humidity. (Robert Brown, in Appendix to Expedition
to Congo, p. 423.) The inhabitants, who are of Spanish descent, call
this zone “tierra templada de los helechos.” The Arabic word for fern
is _feledschun_, _f_ being changed into _h_ in helechos according
to Spanish custom: perhaps the Arabic feledschun is connected with
“faladscha,” “it divides;” in allusion to the finely divided margins of
fern leaves or fronds. (Abu Zacaria Ebn el Awam, Libro de Agricultura,
traducido por J. A. Banqueri, T. ii. Madr. 1802, p. 736.)

The conditions of mild temperature and an atmosphere nearly saturated
with vapour, together with great equability of climate in respect to
both temperature and moisture, are fulfilled on the declivities of
the mountains, in the valleys of the Andes, and above all in the mild
and humid atmosphere of the southern hemisphere, where arborescent
ferns extend not only to New Zealand and Van Diemen Island (Tasmania),
but even to the Straits of Magellan and to Campbell Islands, or to
a latitude almost corresponding to that of Berlin in the northern
hemisphere. Of tree-ferns, Dicksonia squarrosa grows vigorously in
46° South latitude, in Dusky Bay (New Zealand); D. antarctica of
Labillardière in Tasmania; a Thyrsopteris in Juan Fernandez; an
undescribed Dicksonia with stems from 12 to 15 (nearly 13 to 16
English) feet in the south of Chili, not far from Valdivia; and a
Lomaria of rather less height in the Straits of Magellan. Campbell
Island is still nearer to the south pole, in 52-1/2° lat., and even
there the stem of the Aspidium venustum rises to 4 feet (4 feet 3
inches, English) before the fronds branch off.

The climatic relations under which Ferns in general flourish, are
manifested in the numerical laws of their quotients of distribution
taken in the manner alluded to in an earlier part of the present
volume. In the low plains of the great continents within the tropics,
the quotient for ferns is, according to Robert Brown, and according
to late researches, 1-20th of all the species of phænogamous plants
growing in the same region; in the mountainous parts of the great
continents in the same latitudes it is from 1-8th to 1-6th. But a very
different ratio is found in the small islands dispersed over the wide
ocean. The proportion of ferns to the whole number of Phanerogamæ
increases there in such a manner that in the groups of islands between
the tropics in the Pacific the ferns equal a fourth,--and in the
solitary far detached islands in the Atlantic Ocean, St. Helena,
and Ascension,--almost equal the half of the entire phænogamous
vegetation. (See an excellent memoir of D’Urville entitled Distribution
géographique des Fougères sur la surface du Globe, in the Annales
des Sciences Nat. T. vi. 1825, p. 51, 66, and 73). From the tropics
(where in the great continents D’Urville estimates the ratio generally
at 1:20) we see the relative frequency of ferns decrease rapidly in
the temperate zone. The quotients are: for North America and for the
British Islands 1/33, for France 1/58, for Germany 1/52, for the dry
parts of the south of Italy 1/74, and for Greece 1/84. Towards the
colder regions of the north we see the _relative_ frequency increase
again rapidly; that is to say, the number of species of ferns decreases
much more slowly than does the number of species of phænogamous plants.
At the same time, the luxuriance, abundance, and mass of individuals in
each species augments the illusive impression of _absolute_ numbers.
According to Wahlenberg’s and Hornemann’s Catalogues the relative
numbers of Filices are, for Lapland 1/25, for Iceland 1/18, and for
Greenland 1/12.

Such, according to the present state of our knowledge, are the natural
laws manifested in the distribution of the pleasing form of Ferns. But
it would seem as if in the family of Ferns, which has so long been
regarded as a cryptogamic family, we had quite recently arrived on the
traces of another natural law, a morphological one of propagation.
Count Leszczyc-Suminski, who happily unites the gift of microscopic
examination with distinguished artistic talent, has discovered in
the prothallium of ferns an organisation by which fructification is
effected. He distinguishes a bisexual arrangement in the ovule-like
cell on the middle of the theca, and in the ciliated antheridia or
spiral threads before examined by Nägeli. The fertilisation is supposed
to take place not by pollen tubes but by the moveable ciliated spiral
threads. (Suminski zur Entwickelungs-geschichte der Farrnkräuter, 1848,
S. 10-14.) According to this view, Ferns, as Ehrenberg expresses it
(Monatl. Berichte der Akad. zu Berlin, Januar 1848, S. 20), would be
produced by a microscopic fertilisation taking place on the prothallium
as a receptacle; and throughout the whole remainder of their often
arborescent development they would be flowerless and fruitless plants,
forming buds or bulbs; the spores or sori on the under side of the
frond not being seeds but flower buds.

[29] p. 28.--“_Liliaceæ._”

The principal seat of this form is Africa, where it is both most
varied and most abundant, and where these beautifully flowering
plants are assembled in masses and determine the aspect and character
of the country. The New Continent does, indeed, also possess superb
Alstromeriæ and species of Pancratium, Hæmanthus, and Crinum (we
augmented the first-named of these genera by nine, and the second by
three species); but these American Liliaceæ grow dispersed, and are
less social than our European Irideæ.

[30] p. 28.--“_Willow Form._”

Of the leading representative of this form, the Willow itself, 150
different species are already known. They are spread over the northern
hemisphere from the Equator to Lapland. They appear to increase in
number and diversity of form between the 46th and 70th degrees of
north latitude, and especially in the part of north of Europe where
the configuration of the land has been so strikingly indented by early
geological changes. Of Willows as tropical plants I am acquainted
with ten or twelve species, which, like the willows of the southern
hemisphere, are deserving of particular attention. As Nature seems
as it were to take pleasure in multiplying certain forms of animals,
for example Anatidæ (Lamellirostres) and Columbæ, in all the zones of
the earth; so are Willows, the different species of Pines, and Oaks,
no less widely disseminated: the latter (oaks) being always alike in
their fruit, though much diversified in the forms of their leaves. In
Willows, the similarity of the foliage, of the ramification, and of
the whole physiognomic appearance, in the most different climates,
is unusually great,--almost greater than even in Coniferæ. In the
southern part of the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere the
number of species of willows decreases considerably, yet (according to
the Flora atlantica of Desfontaines) Tunis has still a species of its
own resembling Salix caprea; and Egypt reckons, according to Forskäl,
five species, from the catkins of whose male flowers a medicine much
employed in the East, Moie chalaf (aqua salicis) is obtained by
distillation. The Willow which I saw in the Canaries is also, according
to Leopold von Buch and Christian Smith, a peculiar species, common
however to that group and to the Island of Madeira,--S. canariensis.
Wallich’s Catalogue of the plants of Nepaul and of the Himalaya cites
from the Indian sub-tropical zone thirteen species, partly described by
Don, Roxburgh, and Lindley. Japan has its indigenous willows, one of
which, S. japonica (Thunb.) is also found as a mountain plant in Nepaul.

Previous to my expedition, the Indian Salix tetrasperma was the only
known intertropical species, so far as I am aware. We collected seven
new species, three of which were from the elevated plains of Mexico,
and were found to extend to an elevation of 8000 (about 8500 English)
feet above the level of the sea. At still greater elevations,--for
example, on the mountain plains situated between 12000 and 14000
feet, (about 12790 and 14920 English,) which we often visited,--we
did not find, either in the Andes of Mexico or in those of Quito and
Peru, anything which could recall the small creeping alpine willows of
the Pyrenees, the Alps, and Lapland (S. herbacea, S. lanata, and S.
reticulata). In Spitzbergen, where the meteorological conditions have
much analogy with those of the Swiss and Scandinavian snow-mountains,
Martins described two dwarf willows, of which the small woody stems
and branches creep on the ground, and which lie so concealed in the
turf-bogs that their small leaves are only discovered with difficulty
under the moss. The species found by me in Peru in 4° 12´ S. latitude,
near Loxa, at the entrance of the forests where the best Cinchona
bark is collected, and described by Willdenow as Salix humboldtiana,
is the one which is most widely distributed in the western part of
South America. A sea-shore species, S. falcata, which we found on the
sandy coast of the Pacific, near Truxillo, is, according to Kunth,
probably only a variety of the above; and possibly the fine and often
pyramidal willow which accompanied us along the banks of the Magdalena,
from Mahates to Bojorque, and which, according to the report of the
natives, had only extended so far within a few years, may also be
identical with Salix humboldtiana. At the confluence of the Rio Opon
with the Magdalena, we found all the islands covered with willows, many
of which had stems 64 English feet high, but only 8 to 10 inches in
diameter. (Humboldt and Kunth, Nova Gen. Plant. T. ii. p. 22, tab. 99.)
Lindley has made us acquainted with a species of Salix from Senegal,
and therefore in the African equinoctial zone. (Lindley, Introduction
to the Natural System of Botany, p. 99.) Blume also found two species
of Salix near the equator, in Java: one wild and indigenous, S.
tetrasperma; and another cultivated, S. sieboldiana. From the southern
temperate zone I know only two willows described by Thunberg, (S.
hirsuta and S. mucronata); they grow by the side of Protea argentea
(which has itself very much the physiognomy of a willow), on the banks
of the Orange River, and their leaves and young shoots form the food
of the hippopotamus. Willows are entirely wanting in Australia and the
neighbouring islands.

[31] p. 29.--“_Myrtaceæ._”

An elegant form, with stiff, shining, thickly set, generally
unindented, small leaves, studded with pellucid dots. Myrtaceæ give
a peculiar character to three districts of the earth’s surface,--the
South of Europe, particularly the calcareous and trachytic islands
which rise above the surface of the Mediterranean;--the continent
of New Holland, adorned with Eucalyptus, Metrosideros, and
Leptospermum;--and an intertropical region, part of which is low, and
part from nine to ten thousand feet high (about 9590 to 10660 English),
in the Andes of South America. This mountain district, called in Quito
the district of the Paramos, is entirely covered with trees which have
a myrtle-like aspect and character, even though they may not all belong
to the natural family of Myrtaceæ. Here, at the above-named elevation,
grow the Escallonia myrtilloides, E. tubar, Simplocos alstonia, some
species of Myrica, and the beautiful Myrtus microphylla which we have
figured in the Plantes équinoxiales, T. i. p. 21, Pl. iv. We found it
growing on mica slate, and extending to an elevation of more than ten
thousand English feet, on the Paramo de Saraguru, near Vinayacu and
Alto de Pulla, which is adorned with so many lovely alpine flowering
plants. Myrtus myrsinoides even extends in the Paramo de Guamani up
to 10500 (11190 English) feet. Of the 40 species of the Genus Myrtus
which we collected in the equinoctial zone, and of which 37 were
undescribed, much the greater part belonged, however, to the plains and
lower mountains. From the mild tropical mountain climate of Mexico we
brought back only a single species (Myrtus xalapensis); but the Tierra
templada, towards the Volcano of Orizaba, must no doubt contain several
more. We found M. maritima near Acapulco, quite on the sea-coast of the
Pacific.

The Escallonias,--among which E. myrtilloides, E. tubar, and E.
floribunda, are the ornament of the Paramos, and by their physiognomy
remind the beholder strongly of the myrtle-form,--once constituted,
in combination with the European and South American Alp-roses
(Rhododendrum and Befaria), and with Clethra, Andromeda, and
Gaylussaccia buxifolia, the family of Ericeæ. Robert Brown (see the
Appendix to Franklin’s Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the
Polar Sea, 1823, p. 765), has raised them to the rank of a separate
family, which Kunth places between Philadelpheæ and Hamamelideæ. The
Escallonia floribunda offers in its geographical distribution one of
the most striking examples, in the habitat of the plant, of proportion
between distance from the equator and vertical elevation above the
level of the sea. In making this statement I again support myself on
the authority of my acute and judicious friend Auguste de St.-Hilaire
(Morphologie végétale, 1840, p. 52):--“Messieurs de Humboldt et
Bonpland ont découvert dans leur expédition l’Escallonia floribunda à
1400 toises par les 4° de latitude australe. Je l’ai retrouvé par les
21° au Brésil dans un pays élevé, mais pourtant infiniment plus bas que
les Andes du Pérou: il est commun entre les 24°.50´ et les 25°.55´ dans
les Campos Geræs, enfin je le revois au Rio de la Plata vers les 35°,
au niveau même l’ocean.”

Trees belonging the group of Myrtaceæ,--to which Melaleuca,
Metrosideros, and Eucalyptus belong in the sub-division of
Leptospermeæ,--produce partially, either where the leaves are replaced
by phyllodias (leaf-stalk leaves), or by the peculiar disposition or
direction of the leaves relatively to the unswollen leaf-stalk, a
distribution of stripes of light and shade unknown in our forests of
round-leaved trees. The first botanical travellers who visited New
Holland were struck with the singularity of the effect thus produced.
Robert Brown was the first to show that this strange appearance arose
from the leaf-stalks (the phyllodias of the Acacia longifolia and
A. suaveolens) being expanded in a vertical direction, and from the
circumstance that the light instead of falling on horizontal surfaces,
falls on and passes between vertical ones. (Adrien de Jussieu, Cours
de Botanique, p. 106, 120, and 700; Darwin, Journal of Researches,
1845, p. 433). Morphological laws in the development of the leafy
organs determine the peculiar character of the effects produced, the
outlines of light and shade. “Phyllodias,” says Kunth, “can, according
to my view, only occur in families which have compound pinnated leaves;
and in point of fact they have as yet only been found in Leguminosæ,
(in Acacias). In Eucalyptus, Metrosideros, and Melaleuca, the leaves
are simple (simplicia), and their edgewise position arises from a half
turn or twist of the leaf-stalk (petiolus); it should be remarked at
the same time that the two surfaces of the leaves are similar.” In the
comparatively shadeless forests of New Holland the optical effects
here alluded to are the more frequent, as two groups of Myrtaceæ and
Leguminosæ, species of Eucalyptus and of Acacia, constitute almost the
half of all the greyish green trees of which those forests consist.
In addition to this, in Melaleuca there are formed between the layers
of the inner bark easily detached portions of epidermis which press
outwards, and by their whiteness remind the European of our birch bark.

The distribution of Myrtaceæ is very different in the two continents.
In the New Continent, and especially in its western portion, it
scarcely extends beyond the 26th parallel of north latitude, according
to Joseph Hooker (Flora antarctica, p. 12); while in the Southern
Hemisphere, according to Claude Gay, there are in Chili 10 species of
Myrtus and 22 species of Eugenia, which, intermixed with Proteaceæ
(Embothrium and Lomatia), and with Fagus obliqua, form forests. The
Myrtaceæ become more abundant beyond 38° S. lat.,--in the Island of
Chiloe, where a Metrosideros-like species of Myrtus (Myrtus stipularis)
forms almost impenetrable thickets under the name of Tepuales; in
Patagonia; and in Fuegia to its extremity in 56-1/2° S. lat. In the
Old Continent they prevail in Europe as far as the 46th parallel of
North latitude: in Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and the Auckland
Islands, they advance to 50-1/2° South latitude.

[32] p. 29.--“_Melastomaceæ._”

This group comprises the genera Melastoma (Fothergilla and Tococa
Aubl.) and Rhexia (Meriana and Osbeckia), of which we found, on either
side of the equator in tropical America alone, 60 new species. Bonpland
has published a superb work on Melastomaceæ, in two volumes, with
coloured drawings. Some species of Rhexia and Melastoma ascend in the
Andes, as alpine or Paramos shrubs, as high as nine and ten thousand
five hundred (about 9600 and 11190 English) feet: among these are
Rhexia cernua, R. stricta, Melastoma obscurum, M. aspergillare, and M.
lutescens.

[33] p. 29.--“_Laurel-form._”

To this form belong the genera of Laurus and Persea, the Ocoteæ
so numerous in South America, and (on account of physiognomic
resemblance), Calophyllum and the superb aspiring Mammea, from among
the Guttiferæ.

[34] p. 29.--“_How interesting and instructive to the landscape painter
would be a work which should present to the eye the leading forms of
vegetation!_”

In order to define somewhat more distinctly what is here only briefly
alluded to, I permit myself to introduce some considerations taken
from a sketch of the history of landscape painting, and of a graphical
representation of the physiognomy of plants, which I have given in the
second volume of Kosmos (Bd. ii. S. 88-90; English edit. vol. ii. p.
86-87).

“All that belongs to the expression of human emotion and to the beauty
of the human form, has attained perhaps its highest perfection in the
northern temperate zone, under the skies of Italy and Greece. By the
combined exercise of imitative art and of creative imagination, the
artist has derived the types of historical painting at once from the
depths of his own mind, and from the contemplation of other beings
of his own race. Landscape painting, though no merely imitative art,
has, it may be said, a more material substratum and a more terrestrial
domain: it requires a greater mass and variety of distinct impressions,
which the mind must receive within itself, fertilize by its own powers,
and reproduce visibly as a free work of art. Hence landscape painting
must be a result at once of a deep and comprehensive reception of the
visible spectacle of external nature, and of this inward process of the
mind.”

“Nature, in every region of the earth, is indeed a reflex of the
whole; the forms of organised beings are repeated everywhere in
fresh combinations; even in the icy north, herbs covering the earth,
large alpine blossoms, and a serene azure sky, cheer a portion of the
year. Hitherto landscape painting has pursued amongst us her pleasing
task, familiar only with the simpler form of our native floras, but
not, therefore, without depth of feeling, or without the treasures
of creative imagination. Even in this narrower field, highly gifted
painters, the Caracci, Gaspar Poussin, Claude Lorraine, and Ruysdael,
have with magic power, by the selection of forms of trees and by
effects of light, found scope wherein to call forth some of the most
varied and beautiful productions of creative art. The fame of these
master-works can never be impaired by those which I venture to hope
for hereafter, and to which I could not but point, in order to recall
the ancient but deeply-seated bond which unites natural knowledge
with poetry and with artistic feeling; for we must ever distinguish
in landscape painting, as in every other branch of art, between
productions derived from direct observation, and those which spring
from the depths of inward feeling and from the power of the idealising
mind. The great and beautiful works which owe their origin to this
creative power of the mind applied to landscape-painting, belong to
the poetry of nature, and like man himself, and the imagination with
which he is gifted, are not rivetted to the soil, or confined to any
single region. I allude here more particularly to the gradation in the
form of trees from Ruysdael and Everdingen, through Claude Lorraine
to Poussin and Annibal Caracci. In the great masters of the art we
perceive no trace of local limitation; but an enlargement of the
visible horizon, and an increased acquaintance with the nobler and
grander forms of nature, and with the luxuriant fulness of life in the
tropical world, offer the advantage not only of enriching the material
substratum of landscape painting, but also of affording a more lively
stimulus to less gifted artists, and of thus heightening their powers
of production.”

[35] p. 30.--“_From the rough bark of Crescentias and Gustavia._”

In the Crescentia cujete (the Tutuma or Calabash-tree, whose large
fruit-shells are so useful to the natives for household purposes),--in
the Cynometra, the Theobroma (the Cacao-tree), and the Perigara (the
Gustavia of Linnæus),--the delicate flowers break through the half
carbonized bark. When children eat the fruit of the Pirigara speciosa
(the Chupo), their whole body becomes tinged with yellow; it is a
jaundice, which lasts from 24 to 36 hours, and then disappears without
the use of medicine.

I have never forgotten the impression which I received of the luxuriant
power of vegetation in the tropical world, when on entering a Cacao
plantation (Caca hual), in the Valles de Aragua, after a damp night,
I saw for the first time large blossoms springing from a root of the
Theobroma deeply imbedded in black earth. It was one of the most
instantaneous manifestations of the activity of the vegetative organic
forces. Northern nations speak of the “awakening of Nature at the first
breath of the mild air of spring.” Such an expression is singularly
contrasted with the imagination of the Stagirite, who recognised in
plants forms which “lie buried in a tranquil slumber that knows no
waking, free from the desires which impel to spontaneous motion.”
(Aristot. de generat. Animal. V. i. p. 778, and de somno et vigil. cap.
1, p. 455, Bekker.)

[36] p. 30.--“_Draw over their heads._”

The flowers of our Aristolochia cordata, to which I have already
referred in Note 25. The largest flowers in the world, apart from
Compositæ (in the Mexican Helianthus annuus), belong to Rafflesia
arnoldi, Aristolochia, Datura, Barringtonia, Gustavia, Carolinea,
Lecythis, Nymphæa, Nelumbium, Victoria regina, Magnolia, Cactus, and to
Orchideous and Liliaceous plants.

[37] p. 31--“_To behold all the shining worlds which stud the heavenly
vault from pole to pole._”

The finest portion of the southern celestial hemisphere, where shine
the constellations of the Centaur, the Ship, and the southern Cross,
and where the soft lustre of the Magellanic clouds is seen, remains for
ever concealed from the view of the inhabitants of Europe. It is only
beneath the equinoctial line that Man enjoys the peculiar privilege of
beholding at once all the stars both of the Southern and the Northern
heavens. Some of our northern constellations seen from thence appear
from their low altitude of a surprising and almost awful magnitude:
for example, Ursus major and minor. As the inhabitant of the tropics
sees all the stars of the firmament, so also, in regions where plains
alternate with deep valleys and lofty mountains, Nature surrounds him
with representatives of all the forms of plants.




POSTSCRIPT

ON THE

PHYSIOGNOMIC CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS.


In the preceding sketch of a “Physiognomy of Plants,” I have had
principally in view three nearly allied subjects:--the absolute
diversity of forms; their numerical proportion, _i. e._ their local
predominance in the total number of species in phænogamous floras;
and their geographic and climatic distribution. If we desire to
rise to general views respecting organic forms, the physiognomy of
plants, the study of their numerical proportions (or the arithmetic
of botany),--and their geography (or the study of their zones of
distribution),--cannot, as it appears to me, be separated from each
other. In the study of the physiognomy of plants, we ought not to
dwell exclusively on the striking contrasts presented by the larger
organic forms separately considered, but we should also seek to discern
the laws which determine the physiognomy of Nature generally, or the
picturesque character of vegetation over the entire surface of the
globe, and the impression produced on the mind of the beholder by the
grouping of contrasted forms in different zones of latitude and of
elevation. It is from this point of view, and with this concentration
or combination of objects, that we become aware, for the first time,
of the close and intimate connection between the subjects which have
been treated of in the foregoing pages. We are here conducted into a
field which has been as yet but little cultivated. I have ventured to
follow the method first employed with such brilliant results in the
Zoological works of Aristotle, and which is especially suited to lay
the foundation of scientific confidence,--a method which, whilst it
continually aims at generality of conception, seeks, at the same time,
to penetrate the specialities of phenomena by the consideration of
particular instances.

The enumeration of forms according to physiognomic diversity is, from
the nature of the case, not susceptible of any strict classification.
Here, as everywhere else, in the consideration of external
conformation, there are certain leading forms which present the most
striking contrasts: such are the groups of arborescent grasses, plants
of the aloë form, the different species of cactus, palms, needle-trees,
Mimosaceæ, and Musaceæ. Even a few scattered individuals of these
groups are sufficient to determine the character of a district, and
to produce on a non-scientific but sensitive beholder a permanent
impression. Other forms, though perhaps much more numerous and
preponderating in mass, may not be calculated either by the outline
and arrangement of the foliage, or by the relation of the stem to the
branches,--by luxuriant vigour of vegetation,--by cheerful grace,--or,
on the other hand, by cheerless contraction of the appendicular organs,
to produce any such characteristic impressions.

As, therefore, a “physiognomic classification,” or a division
into groups from external aspect or “facies,” does not admit of
being applied to the whole vegetable kingdom, so also, in such a
classification, the grounds 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 arrangement 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. e._ 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 consideration 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, die Pflanze 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
(Theoria Generationis, § 5-9), and since our great (German) Poet, the
process of development in the organs of fructification has become the
morphological foundation of all systematic 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 which we receive;
they individualise the physiognomic character of the vegetable form
and that of the landscape, or of the region in which any of the more
strongly-marked and distinguished types severally occur. The law is
here given by agreement and affinity 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,” “facies”), to bestow the names of European forms upon
tropical plants or trees bearing very different 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 agreement of
physiognomy and the greatest diversity in the inflorescence and
fructification,--between the external aspect as determined by the
appendicular or leaf-system, and the reproductive organs on which the
groups of the natural systems of botany are founded,--is a remarkable
and surprising phenomenon. 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 _independent_
of the structure of the organs of reproduction; but in reality such a
dependence only shows itself in a small number of families,--in Ferns,
Grasses and Cyperaceæ, Palms, Coniferæ, Umbelliferæ, and Aroideæ. In
Leguminosæ the agreement in physiognomic character is scarcely to be
recognised until we divide them into the several groups (Papilionaceæ,
Cæsalpinineæ, and Mimoseæ). I may name, of types which, when compared
with each other, shew considerable accordance in physiognomy with
great difference in the structure of the flowers and fruit, Palms and
Cycadeæ, the latter being more nearly allied to Coniferæ; Cuscuta,
one of the Convolvulacæ, and the leafless Cassytha, a parasitical
Laurinea; Equisetum (belonging to the great division of Cryptogamia),
and Ephedra, closely allied to Coniferæ. On the other hand, our common
gooseberries and currants (Ribes) are so closely allied by their
inflorescence to the Cactus, _i. e._ to the family of Opuntiaceæ, that
it is only quite recently that they have been separated from it! One
and the same family (that of Asphodeleæ) comprises the gigantic Dracæna
draco, the common asparagus, and the Aletris with its coloured flowers.
Not only do simple and compound 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
Aralia shews still greater independence in the form of the leaves:
“folia simplicia, integra, vel lobata, digitata et pinnata.” (Compare
Kunth, Synopsis Plantarum quas in itinere collegerunt, Al. de Humboldt
et Am. Bonpland, T. iii, p. 87 and 360.)

Pinnated leaves appear to me to belong chiefly to families which are
in the highest grade of organic development, namely, the Polypetalæ;
and among these, in the Perigynic class, to the Leguminosæ, Rosaceæ,
Terebinthaceæ, and Juglandeæ; and in the Hypogynic, to the Aurantiaceæ,
Cedrelaceæ, and Sapindaceæ. The beautiful doubly-pinnated leaves which
form one of the principal ornaments of the torrid zone, are most
frequent among the Leguminosæ, in Mimoseæ, also in some Cæsalpinieæ,
Coulterias, and Gleditschias; never, as Kunth remarks, in Papilionaceæ.
“Folia pinnata” and “folia composita” are never found in Gentianeæ,
Rubiaceæ, and Myrtaceæ. In the morphological 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.




ON THE

STRUCTURE AND MODE OF ACTION

OF

VOLCANOS,

IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE GLOBE.

[This dissertation was read in a public assembly of the Academy at
Berlin, on the 24th of January, 1823.]


When we reflect on the influence which, for some centuries past, the
progress of geography and the multiplication of distant voyages and
travels have exercised on the study of nature, we are not long in
perceiving how different this influence has been, according as the
researches were directed to organic forms on the one hand, or on the
other to the study of the inanimate substances of which the earth is
composed--to the knowledge of rocks, their relative ages, and their
origin. Different forms of plants and animals enliven the surface of
the earth in every zone, whether the temperature of the atmosphere
varies in accordance with the latitude and with the many inflections
of the isothermal lines on plains but little raised above the level
of the sea, or whether it changes rapidly in ascending in an almost
vertical direction the steep declivities of mountain-chains. Organic
nature gives to each zone of the earth a peculiar physiognomy; but
where the solid crust of the earth appears unclothed by vegetation,
inorganic nature imparts no such distinctive character. The same kinds
of rocks, associated in groups, appear in either hemisphere, from
the equator to the poles. In a remote island, surrounded by exotic
vegetation, beneath a sky where his accustomed stars no longer shine,
the voyager often recognises with joy the argillaceous schists of his
birth-place, and the rocks familiar to his eye in his native land.

This absence of any dependence of geological relations on the present
constitution of climates does not preclude or even diminish the
salutary influence of numerous observations made in distant regions
on the advance and progress of geological science, though it imparts
to this progress something of a peculiar direction. Every expedition
enriches natural history with new species or new genera of plants and
animals: there are thus presented to us sometimes forms which connect
themselves with previously long known types, and thus permit us to
trace and contemplate in its perfection the really regular though
apparently broken or interrupted network of organic forms: at other
times shapes which appear isolated,--either surviving remnants of
extinct genera or orders, or otherwise members of still undiscovered
groups, stimulating afresh the spirit of research and expectation. The
examination of the solid crust of the globe does not, indeed, unfold
to us such diversity and variety; it presents to us, on the contrary,
an agreement in the constituent particles, in the superposition of
the different kinds of masses, and in their regular recurrence, which
excites the admiration of the geologist. In the chain of the Andes,
as in the mountains of middle Europe, one formation appears, as it
were, to summon to itself another. Rocks of the same name exhibit the
same outlines; basalt and dolerite form twin mountains; dolomite,
sandstone, and porphyry, abrupt precipices; and vitreous feldspathic
trachyte, high dome-like elevations. In the most distant zones large
crystals separate themselves in a similar manner from the compact
texture of the primitive mass, as if by an internal development,
form groups in association, and appear associated in layers, often
announcing the vicinity of new independent formations. Thus in any
single system of mountains of considerable extent we see the whole
inorganic substances of which the crust of the earth is composed
represented, as it were, with more or less distinctness; yet, in order
to become completely acquainted with the important phenomena of the
composition, the relative age, and mode of origin of rocks, we must
compare together observations from the most varied and remote regions.
Problems which long perplexed the geologist in his native land in these
northern countries, find their solution near the equator. If, as has
been already remarked, new zones do not necessarily present to us new
kinds of rock (_i. e._ unknown groupings or associations of simple
substances), they, on the other hand, teach us to discern the great and
every where equally prevailing laws, according to which the strata of
the crust of the earth are superposed upon each other, penetrate each
other as veins or dykes, or are upheaved or elevated by elastic forces.

If, then, our geological knowledge is thus promoted by researches
embracing extensive parts of the earth’s surface, it is not surprising
that the particular class of phenomena which form the subject of the
present discussion should long have been regarded from a point of view
the more restricted as the points of comparison were of difficult, I
might almost say arduous and painful, attainment and access. Until
the close of the last century all real or supposed knowledge of
the structure or form of volcanos, and of the mode of operation of
subterranean forces, was taken from two mountains of the South of
Europe, Vesuvius and Etna. The former of these being the easiest of
access, and its eruptions, as is generally the case in volcanos of
small elevation, being most frequent in their occurrence, a hill of
minor elevation became the type which regulated all the ideas formed
respecting phænomena exhibited on a far larger scale in many vast and
distant regions, as in the mighty volcanos arranged in linear series in
Mexico, South America, and the Asiatic Islands. Such a proceeding might
not unnaturally recall Virgil’s shepherd, who thought he beheld in his
humble cottage the type of the eternal City, Imperial Rome.

A more careful examination of the whole of the Mediterranean, and
especially of those islands and coasts where men awoke to the noblest
intellectual culture, might, however, have dispelled views formed from
so limited a consideration of nature. Among the Sporades, trachytic
rocks have been upraised from the deep bottom of the sea, forming
islands resembling that which, in the vicinity of the Azores, appeared
thrice periodically, at nearly equal intervals, in three centuries.
The Peloponnesus has, between Epidaurus and Trœzene, near Methone, a
Monte Nuovo described by Strabo and seen again by Dodwell, which is
higher than the Monte Nuovo of the Phlegræan Fields near Baiæ, and
perhaps even higher than the new volcano of Jorullo in the plains of
Mexico, which I found surrounded by several thousand small basaltic
cones which had been protruded from the earth and were still smoking.
In the Mediterranean and its shores, it is not only from the permanent
craters of isolated mountains having a constant communication with
the interior, as Stromboli, Vesuvius, and Etna, that volcanic fires
break forth: at Ischia, on the Monte Epomeo, and also, as it would
appear by the accounts of the ancients, in the Lelantine plain near
Chalcis, lavas have flowed from fissures which have suddenly opened at
the surface of the earth. Besides these phænomena, which fall within
the historic period, or within the restricted domain of well-assured
tradition, and which Carl Ritter will collect and elucidate in his
masterly work on Geography,--the shores of the Mediterranean exhibit
numerous remains of more ancient volcanic action. In the south part
of France, in Auvergne, we see a separate complete system of volcanos
arranged in lines, trachytic domes alternating with cones of eruption,
from which streams of lava have flowed in narrow bands. The plain of
Lombardy, as level as the surface of the sea, and forming an inner Gulf
of the Adriatic, surrounds the trachyte of the Euganean Hills, where
rise domes of granular trachyte, obsidian, and pearl-stone, masses
connected by a common origin, which break through the lower cretaceous
rock and nummulitic lime-stone, but have never flowed in narrow
streams. Similar evidences of ancient revolutions of nature are found
in several parts of the mainland of Greece and in Asia Minor, countries
which will one day offer a rich field for geological investigation,
when intellectual light shall revisit the seats from which it has
radiated to the western world, and when oppressed humanity shall no
longer be subject to the barbarism of Turkish rule.

I recall the geographical proximity of these various phænomena, in
order to shew that the basin of the Mediterranean, with its series
of islands, might have offered to an attentive observer much that
has been recently discovered, under various forms, in South America,
Teneriffe, and the Aleutian Islands near the polar circle. The objects
to be observed were assembled within a moderate distance; yet distant
voyages, and the comparison of extensive regions in and out of Europe,
have been required for the clear perception and recognition of the
resemblance between volcanic phænomena and their dependence on each
other.

Our ordinary language, which often gives permanency and apparent
authority to the first-formed erroneous views of natural phænomena,
but which also often points instinctively to the truth,--our ordinary
language, I repeat, applies the term “volcanic” to all eruptions of
subterranean fires or molten substances; to columns of smoke and
vapour rising from rocks, as at Colares after the great earthquake
of Lisbon; to “Salses” or mud volcanos, argillaceous cones emitting
mud, asphalte, and hydrogen, as at Girgenti in Sicily, and at Turbaco
in South America; to the Geysers, hot springs in which, as in those
of Iceland, the waters, pressed by elastic vapours, rise in jets to a
considerable altitude; and, in general, to all operations of natural
forces having their seat in the interior of our planet. In Central
America (Guatimala), and in the Philippine Islands, the natives even
distinguish formally between water- and fire-volcanos, Volcanes de
agua y de fuego, giving the former name to those mountains from which
subterranean waters issue from time to time with violent earthquake
shocks and a hollow noise.

Not denying the connexion of the different phenomena which have been
referred to, it yet appears desirable to give greater precision to the
terms employed in the physical as well as in the mineralogical part
of geology, and not to apply the word “volcano” at one moment to a
mountain terminating in a permanent igneous opening or fiery crater,
and at another to every subterranean cause of volcanic phenomena. In
the present state of our planet the most ordinary form of volcanos
is indeed in all parts of the globe that of an isolated conical
mountain, such as Vesuvius, Etna, the Peak of Teneriffe, Tunguragua,
and Cotapaxi. I have myself seen such volcanos varying in size from
the smallest hill to an elevation of 18000 (19184 English) feet above
the sea. But besides these isolated cones there are also permanent
openings or craters, having established channels of communication
with the interior of the earth, which are situated on long chains of
mountains with serrated crests, and not even always on the middle of
the ridge, but sometimes at its extremity: such is Pichincha, situated
between the Pacific and the city of Quito, and which acquired celebrity
in connection with Bouguer’s earliest barometric formulæ, and such
are the volcanos which rise in the elevated Steppe de los Pastos,
itself ten thousand (10657 English) feet high. All these summits,
which are of various shapes, consist of trachyte, formerly called
Trap-porphyry: a granular vesicular rock composed of different kinds
of feldspar (Labradorite, Oligoklase, and Albite), augite, hornblende,
and sometimes interspersed mica, and even quartz. In cases where the
evidence of the first outburst or eruption, or I might say where the
ancient structure or scaffolding remain entire, the isolated conical
mount is surrounded by an amphitheatre or lofty circular rampart of
rocky strata superimposed upon each other. Such walls or ring-formed
ramparts are called “craters of elevation,” a great and important
phenomenon, concerning which a memorable treatise was presented to our
Academy five years ago (_i. e._ in 1818), by the first geologist of our
time, Leopold von Buch, from whose writings I have borrowed several of
the views contained in the present discussion.

Volcanos which communicate with the atmosphere through permanent
openings, conical basaltic hills, and craterless trachytic domes,
sometimes as low as Sarcouy, sometimes as lofty as the Chimborazo, form
various groups. Comparative geography shows us sometimes small clusters
or distinct systems of mountains, with craters and lava-currents
in the Canaries and the Azores, and without craters and without
lava-currents, properly so-called, in the Euganean hills and the
Siebengebirge near Bonn;--and at other times the same study describes
to us volcanos arranged in single or double lines extending through
many hundred leagues in length, these lines being either parallel
to the direction of a great chain of mountains, as in Guatimala, in
Peru, and in Java, or cutting it transversely or at right angles,
as in tropical Mexico. In this land of the Aztecs the fire-emitting
trachytic mountains are the only ones which attain the elevation of the
lofty region of perpetual snow; they are ranged in the direction of
a parallel of latitude, and have probably been raised from a fissure
420 English geographical miles long, traversing the continent from the
Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.

These assemblages of volcanos, whether in rounded groups or in double
lines, show in the most conclusive manner that the volcanic agencies
do not depend on small or restricted causes, in near proximity to the
surface of the earth, but that they are great phænomena of deep-seated
origin. The whole of the eastern part of the American continent, which
is poor in metals, is, in its present state, without fire-emitting
mountains, without masses of trachyte, and perhaps even without basalt
containing olivine. All the American volcanos are on the side of the
continent which is opposite to Asia, in the chain of the Andes which
runs nearly in the direction of a meridian, and extends over a length
of 7200 geographical miles.

The whole plateau or high-land of Quito, of which Pichincha, Cotopaxi,
and Tunguragua form the summits, is to be viewed as a single volcanic
furnace. The subterranean fire breaks forth sometimes through one
and sometimes through another of these openings, which it has been
customary to regard as separate and distinct volcanos. The progressive
march of the subterranean fire has been here directed for three
centuries from North to South. Even the earthquakes which occasion
such dreadful ravages in this part of the world afford remarkable
proofs of the existence of subterranean communications, not only
between countries where there are no volcanos (a fact which had long
been known), but also between fire-emitting openings situated at great
distances asunder. Thus in 1797 the volcano of Pasto, east of the
Guaytara River, emitted uninterruptedly for three months a lofty column
of smoke, which column disappeared at the instant when, at a distance
of 240 geographical miles, the great earthquake of Riobamba and the
immense eruption of mud called “Moya” took place, causing the death of
between thirty and forty thousand persons.

The sudden appearance of the Island of Sabrina near the Azores, on the
80th of January, 1811, was the precursor of the terrible earthquake
movements which, much farther to the west, shook almost incessantly,
from the month of May 1811 to June 1813, first the West Indian Islands,
then the plain of the Ohio and Mississipi, and lastly, the opposite
coast of Venezuela or Caraccas. Thirty days after the destruction of
the principal city of that province, the long tranquil volcano of
the Island of St. Vincent burst forth in an eruption. A remarkable
phenomenon accompanied this eruption: at the same moment when the
explosion took place, on the 30th of April, 1811, a loud subterranean
noise was heard in South America, which spread terror and dismay over
a district of 2200 (German) geographical square miles (35200 English
geographical square miles). The dwellers on the banks of the Apure
near the confluence of the Rio Nula, and the most distant inhabitants
of the sea coast of Venezuela, alike compared the sound to that of the
discharge of great pieces of ordnance. Now from the confluence of the
Nula with the Apure (by which latter river I arrived on the Orinoco)
to the volcano of St. Vincent is a distance in a straight line of
628 English geographical miles. The sound, which certainly was not
propagated through the air, must have proceeded from a deep-seated
subterranean cause; for its intensity was scarcely greater on the sea
coast nearest to the volcano where the eruption was taking place, than
in the interior of the country, in the basin of the Apure and the
Orinoco.

It would be unnecessary to multiply examples by citing other instances
which I have collected, but, to recall a phenomenon of European
historical importance, I will only farther mention the celebrated
earthquake of Lisbon. Simultaneously with that event, on the 1st
of November, 1755, not only were the Swiss lakes and the sea near
the coast of Sweden violently agitated, but even among the eastern
West Indian Islands, Martinique, Antigua, and Barbadoes, where the
tide never exceeds thirty inches, the sea suddenly rose more than
twenty feet. All these phenomena show the operation of subterranean
forces, acting either dynamically in earthquakes, in the tension and
agitation of the crust; or in volcanos, in the production and chemical
alteration of substances. They also show that these forces do not act
superficially, in the thin outermost crust of the globe, but from great
depths in the interior of our planet, through crevices or unfilled
veins, affecting simultaneously widely distant points of the earth’s
surface.

The greater the variety of structure in volcanos, or in the elevations
which surround the channel through which the molten masses of the
interior of the earth reach its surface, the greater the importance of
submitting this structure to strict investigation and measurement. The
interest attaching to these measurements, which formed a particular
object of my researches in another quarter of the globe, is enhanced
by the consideration that at many points the magnitude to be measured
is found to be a variable quantity. The philosophical study of nature
endeavours, in the vicissitudes of phenomena, to connect the present
with the past.

If we desire to investigate either the fact of a periodical return,
or the law of progressive variations or changes in phenomena, it is
essential to obtain, by means of observations carefully made and
connected with determinate epochs, certain fixed points which may
afford a base for future numerical comparisons. If we only possessed
determinations made once in each period of a thousand years, of the
mean temperature of the atmosphere and of the earth in different
latitudes, or of the mean height of the barometer at the level of the
sea, we should know whether, and in what ratio, the temperature of
different climates had increased or decreased, or whether the height
of the atmosphere had undergone changes. Such points of comparison are
also needed for the inclination and declination of the magnetic needle,
as well as for the intensity of the magneto-electric forces, on which,
within the circle of this Academy, two excellent physicists, Seebeck
and Erman, have thrown so much light. As it is an honourable object for
the exertions of scientific societies to trace out perseveringly the
cosmical variations of temperature, atmospheric pressure, and magnetic
direction and intensity, so it is the duty of the geological traveller,
in determining the inequalities of the earth’s surface, to attend more
particularly to the variable height of volcanos. The endeavours made by
me for this object in the Mexican mountains, in respect to the Volcan
de Toluca, the Popocatepetl, the Cofre de Perote or Nauhcampatepetl,
and the Jorullo, and also the volcano of Pichincha in the Andes of
Quito, have been continued since my return to Europe at different
epochs on Vesuvius. Where complete trigonometric or barometric
measurements are wanting, accurate angles of altitude, taken at points
which are exactly determined, may be substituted for them; and for
a comparison of determinations made at different epochs, angles of
altitude so measured may even be often preferable to the complication
of circumstances which more complete operations may involve.

Saussure had measured Mount Vesuvius, in 1773, when the two margins
of the crater, the north-western and the south-eastern, appeared to
him be of equal height. He found their height above the level of the
sea 609 toises, 3894 English feet. The eruption of 1794 occasioned
a breaking down of the margin of the crater on the southern side,
and a consequent inequality between the height of the two edges
which the most unpractised eye does not fail to distinguish even at
a considerable distance. In 1805, Leopold von Buch, Gay-Lussac, and
myself, measured the height of Vesuvius three times, and found the
northern margin opposite to La Somma, (the Rocca del Palo), exactly as
given by Saussure, but the southern margin 75 toises, or 450 French
or 479 English feet, lower than he had found it in 1773. The whole
elevation of the volcano on the side of Torre del Greco (the side
towards which, for the last thirty years, the igneous action has,
as it were, been principally directed,) had at that time diminished
one-eighth. The height of the cone of ashes, as compared with the whole
height of the mountain, is in Vesuvius as 1 to 3; in Pichincha, as 1 to
10; and in the Peak of Teneriffe, as 1 to 22. In these three volcanic
mountains, the cone of ashes is therefore, relatively speaking, highest
in Vesuvius; probably because, being a low volcano, the action has been
principally by the summit.

A few months ago (in 1822) I was enabled not only to repeat my former
barometric measurements of the height of Vesuvius, but also, during
the course of three visits to the summit, to make a more complete
determination of all the edges of the crater[38]. These determinations
may not be without interest, since they include the long period of
great eruptions between 1805 and 1822, and constitute perhaps the only
known examination and measurement of a volcano at different epochs, in
which the different parts of the examination are all truly comparable
with each other. We learn from it that the margins of craters are a
phenomenon of far more permanent character than had been previously
inferred from passing observations, and this not only where (as in the
Peak of Teneriffe, and in all the volcanos of the chain of the Andes,)
they are visibly composed of trachyte, but also elsewhere. According to
my last determinations, the north-west edge of Vesuvius has, perhaps,
not altered at all since the time of Saussure, an interval of 49 years;
and the south-eastern side, on the side towards Bosche Tre Case, which,
in 1794, had become 400 French (426 English) feet lower, has since then
hardly altered 10 toises (60 French or 64 English feet).

If the public journals, in describing great eruptions, often state
the shape of Vesuvius to have undergone an entire change, and if
these assertions appear to be confirmed by picturesque views sketched
at Naples, the cause of the error consists in the outlines of the
margin of the crater having been confounded with those of the cones of
eruption accidentally formed in the middle of the crater on its floor
or bottom which has been upheaved by vapours. Such a cone of eruption,
consisting of loosely heaped-up rapilli and scoriæ, had in the course
of the years 1816-1818 gradually risen so as to be seen above the
south-eastern margin of the crater; and the eruption of the month of
February 1822 augmented it so much, that it even became from 100 to 110
(about 107 to 117 English) feet higher than the north-western margin
of the crater (the Rocca del Palo). This remarkable cone, which it
had become customary in Naples to regard as the true summit of the
mountain, fell in, with a dreadful noise, in the last eruption, on the
night of the 22d of October (1822): so that the floor of the crater,
which had been constantly accessible since 1811, is now 750 (almost
800 English) feet lower than the northern, and 200 (213 English)
feet lower than the southern edge of the volcano. Variations in the
form and relative position of the cones of eruption,--the openings
of which ought not to be confounded, as they often are, with the
crater of the volcano itself,--give to Vesuvius at different epochs
a different appearance, which would enable a person well acquainted
with the history of the volcano, on a mere inspection of Hackert’s
paintings in the palace of Portici, to tell from the outlines of the
summit, according as the northern or the southern side of the mountain
is represented as the highest, in what year the artist had taken the
sketch from which the picture was made.

In the last eruption, in the night of the 23d to the 24th of October,
twenty-four hours after the falling in of the great cone of scoriæ
which has been mentioned, and when the small but numerous currents of
lava had already flowed off, the fiery eruption of ashes and rapilli
commenced: it continued without intermission for twelve days, but was
greatest in the first four days. During this period the detonations in
the interior of the volcano were so violent that the mere concussion of
the air, (for no earthquake movement was perceived), rent the ceilings
of the rooms in the palace of Portici. In the neighbouring villages of
Resina, Torre del Greco, Torre del Annunziata, and Bosche Tre Case,
a remarkable phenomenon was witnessed. Throughout the whole of that
part of the country the air was so filled with ashes as to cause in
the middle of the day profound darkness, lasting for several hours:
lanterns were carried in the streets, as has so often been done at
Quito during the eruptions of Pichincha. The flight of the inhabitants
had never been more general: lava currents are regarded by those who
dwell near Vesuvius with less dread than an eruption of ashes, a
phenomenon which had never been known to such a degree in modern times;
and the obscure tradition of the manner in which the destruction of
Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiæ took place, filled the imaginations of
men with appalling images.

The hot aqueous vapours which rose from the crater during the eruption
and spread themselves in the atmosphere, formed, in cooling, a dense
cloud, surrounding the column of fire and ashes, which rose to a height
of between nine and ten thousand feet. So sudden a condensation of
vapour, and even, as Gay-Lussac has shewn, the formation of the cloud
itself, augmented the electric tension. Flashes of forked lightning,
issuing from the column of ashes, darted in every direction; and the
rolling thunders were distinctly heard, and distinguished from the
sounds which proceeded from the interior of the volcano. In no other
eruption had the play of the electric forces formed so striking a
feature.

On the morning of the 26th of October, a surprising rumour prevailed,
to the effect that a torrent of boiling water was gushing from the
crater, and pouring down the slope of the cone of ashes. The learned
and zealous observer of the volcano, Monticelli, soon discovered that
this erroneous rumour had arisen from an optical illusion. The supposed
torrent of water was in reality a flow of dry ashes, which, being as
loose and moveable as shifting sands, issued in large quantities from
a crevice in the upper margin of the crater. The cultivated fields
had suffered much from a long-continued drought which had preceded
the eruption; towards its close the “volcanic thunder-storm” which
has been described produced an exceedingly violent and abundant fall
of rain. This phenomenon is associated in all climates with the close
of a volcanic eruption. As during the eruption the cone of ashes is
generally enveloped in cloud, and as it is in its immediate vicinity
that the rain is most violent, torrents of mud are seen to descend
from it in all directions, which the terrified husbandman imagines to
consist of waters which have risen from the interior of the volcano
and overflowed the crater; while geologists have erroneously thought
they recognised in them either sea-water or muddy products of the
volcano, “Eruptions boueuses,” or, in the language of some old French
systematists, products of an igneo-aqueous liquefaction.

Where, as is generally the case in the Andes, the summit of the
volcano rises into the region of perpetual snow, (even attaining,
in some cases, an elevation twice as great as that of Etna), the
melting of the snows renders such inundations as have been described
far more abundant and disastrous. The phenomena in question are
meteorologically connected with the eruptions of volcanos, and are
variously modified by the height of the mountain, the dimensions of
that part of it which is always covered with snow, and the extent and
degree to which the sides of the cone of cinders become heated; but
they are not to be regarded as volcanic phenomena properly so called.
Vast cavities also often exist on the slope or at the foot of volcanos
which, communicating through many channels with the mountain torrents,
form large subterranean lakes or reservoirs of water. When earthquake
shocks, which, in the Andes, usually precede all igneous eruptions,
convulse the entire mass of the volcano, these subterranean reservoirs
are opened, and there issue from them water, fishes, and tufaceous mud.
This is the singular phenomenon which brings to light an otherwise
unknown fish, the Pimelodes Cyclopum, called by the inhabitants of the
highlands of Quito “Preñadilla,” and which I described soon after my
return. When, on the night of the 19th of June, 1698, the summit of a
mountain situated to the north of Chimborazo, the Carguairazo, above
19000 English feet high, fell in, the country for nearly thirty English
geographical square miles round was covered with mud and fishes; and
seven years earlier a putrid fever, in the town of Ibarra, was ascribed
to a similar eruption of fish from the volcano of Imbaburu.

I recall these facts, because they throw some light on the difference
between the eruption of dry ashes and miry inundations of tufa and
trass, carrying with them wood, charcoal, and shells. The quantity
of ashes emitted by Vesuvius in the recent eruption, like every
thing connected with volcanos and other great natural phenomena of a
character to excite terror, has been exceedingly exaggerated in the
public papers; and two Neapolitan chemists, Vicenzo Pepe and Giuseppe
di Nobili, notwithstanding the statements of Monticelli and Covelli to
the contrary, even describe the ashes as containing silver and gold.
According to the results of my researches and inquiries, the thickness
of the bed of ashes formed by the twelve days’ shower was but little
above three feet, towards Bosche Tre Case, on the slope of the cone
where rapilli were mingled with them; and in the plain, from 15-1/2 to
19 inches at the utmost. Such measurements ought not to be taken in
places where the ashes have been heaped up by the action of wind, like
drifted snow or sand, or have accumulated from being carried thither by
water. The times are passed for seeking only the marvellous in volcanic
phenomena, in the manner of the ancients among whom Ctesias made the
ashes of Etna to be conveyed as far as the Indian peninsula. There are
in Mexico veins of gold and silver in trachytic porphyry; but in the
ashes of Vesuvius which I brought back with me, and which an excellent
chemist, Heinrich Rose, has examined at my request, no traces of either
gold or silver have been discovered.

Although the above mentioned results, which are quite in accordance
with the exact observations of Monticelli, differ much from the
accounts which have been current during the short interval which has
elapsed, it is nevertheless true that the eruption of ashes from
Vesuvius from the 24th to the 28th of last October (1822) is the most
memorable of any of which we possess an authentic account, since
that which occasioned the death of the elder Pliny. The quantity of
ashes is, perhaps, three times as great as has ever been seen to fall
since volcanic phenomena have been attentively observed in Italy. A
stratum of ashes, from 16 to 19 inches thick, appears at first sight
insignificant compared with the mass which we find covering Pompeii;
but, not to speak of the increase which that mass has probably received
by the effects of heavy rains and other causes during the centuries
which have since elapsed, and without renewing the animated debate
respecting the causes of the destruction of the Campanian towns,
and which, on the other side of the Alps, has been carried on with
a considerable degree of scepticism, it should here be recalled to
recollection that the eruptions of a volcano, at widely separated
epochs, do not well admit of comparison, as respects their intensity.
All inferences derived from analogy are inadequate where quantitative
relations are concerned; as the quantity of lava and ashes, the
height of the column of smoke, and the loudness or intensity of the
detonations.

From the geographical description of Strabo, and from an opinion given
by Vitruvius respecting the volcanic origin of pumice, we perceive
that, up to the year of the death of Vespasian, _i. e._ previous to the
eruption which overwhelmed Pompeii, Vesuvius had more the appearance of
an extinct volcano than of a Solfatara. When, after long repose, the
subterranean forces suddenly opened for themselves new channels, and
again broke through the beds of primitive and trachytic rocks, effects
must have been produced for which subsequent ones do not furnish a
standard. From the well-known letter in which the younger Pliny informs
Tacitus of his uncle’s death, it may be clearly seen that the renewal
of volcanic outbursts, or what might be called the revival of the
slumbering volcano, began with an eruption of ashes. The same thing
was observed at Jorullo when, in September 1759, the new volcano,
breaking through beds of syenite and trachyte, rose suddenly in the
plain. The country-people took flight on finding their huts strewed
with ashes which had been emitted from the everywhere opening ground.
In the ordinary periodical manifestations of volcanic activity, on the
contrary, the shower of ashes marks the termination of each particular
eruption. There is a passage in the letter of the younger Pliny which
shews clearly that, at a very early stage of the eruption, the dry
ashes which had fallen had reached a thickness of four or five feet,
without accumulation from drift or other extraneous cause. He writes,
in the course of his narrative, “the court which had to be crossed to
reach the room in which Pliny was taking his noon-day repose was so
filled with ashes and pumice, that, if he had longer delayed coming
forth, he would have found the passage stopped.” In an enclosed space
like a court, the action of wind in drifting the ashes can scarcely
have been very considerable.

I have interrupted my general comparative view of volcanos by a notice
of particular observations made on Vesuvius, partly on account of the
great interest excited by the recent eruption, and partly on account
of those recollections of the catastrophes of Pompeii and Herculaneum,
which are almost involuntarily recalled to our minds by the occurrence
of any considerable shower of ashes. I have recorded in a note the
measurements of height made by myself and others on Vesuvius and in its
vicinity.

We have hitherto been considering the structure and mode of action
of those volcanos which have a permanent communication with the
interior of the Earth by craters. The summits of such volcanos
consist of masses of trachyte and lava upheaved by elastic forces and
traversed by veins. The permanency of their action gives us reason
to infer great complexity of structure. They have, so to speak, an
individual character which remains unaltered for long periods of time.
Neighbouring mountains often present the greatest differences in their
products: leucitic and feldspathic lavas, obsidian with pumice, and
masses of basalt containing olivine. They belong to the most recent
terrestrial phænomena, breaking through almost all the sedimentary
strata, and their products and lava currents are of later origin
than our valleys. Their life, if I may permit myself to employ this
figurative mode of expression, depends on the manner and permanence
of their communications with the interior of the Earth. They often
continue for centuries in a state of repose, are then suddenly
rekindled, and end by becoming Solfataras, emitting aqueous vapours,
gases, and acids; sometimes, however, as in the case of the Peak of
Teneriffe, we find that their summit has already become a laboratory of
regenerated sulphur; while from the sides of the mountain there still
issue large torrents of lava, basaltic in the lower part, but towards
the upper part, where the pressure is less,[39] presenting the form of
obsidian with pumice.

Distinct from these volcanos provided with permanent craters, there
is another class of volcanic phenomena more rarely observed, but
particularly instructive to the geologist, as they recall the ancient
world or the earliest geological revolutions of our planet. Trachytic
mountains open suddenly, emit lava and ashes, and close again, perhaps
never to reopen. Thus it was with the gigantic mountain of Antisana in
the chain of the Andes, and with the Monte Epomeo in Ischia in 1302.
Sometimes such an outbreak has even taken place in plains: as in the
high plateau of Quito, in Iceland at a distance from Mount Hecla,
and in Eubœa in the Lelantine Fields. Many of the upheaved islands
belong to this class of transitory phænomena. In all these cases the
communication with the interior of the earth is not permanent, and
the action ceases as soon as the cleft or fissure forming a temporary
channel closes again. Veins or dykes of basalt, dolerite, and
porphyry, which in different parts of the earth traverse almost all
formations, and masses of syenite, augitic porphyry, and amygdaloid,
which characterise the recent transition and oldest sedimentary rocks,
have probably been formed in a similar manner. In the youth of our
planet, the substances of the interior being still fluid, penetrated
through the everywhere fissured crust of the globe, sometimes becoming
solidified in the form of rocky veins or dykes of granular texture, and
sometimes spreading out in broad sheets, and resembling superimposed
strata. The volcanic products or rocks transmitted to us from the
earlier ages of our planet have not flowed in narrow bands like the
lavas of the isolated conical volcanos of the present time. The
mixtures of augite, titaniferous iron, feldspar, and hornblende, may
have been the same at different epochs, sometimes approximating more to
basalt and sometimes to trachyte; and, (as we learn from the important
researches of Mitscherlich, and the analogy of artificial igneous
products) chemical substances may have united in definite proportions
in a crystalline form: in all cases we recognise that substances
similar in composition have arrived at the surface of the earth by
very different ways; either simply upheaved, or penetrating through
temporary fissures; and that breaking through the older rocks, (_i.
e._ the earlier oxydized crust of the globe), they have finally issued
as lava currents from conical mountains having a permanent crater. To
confound together phenomena so different is to throw the geological
study of volcanos and volcanic action back into the obscurity from
which, by the aid of numerous comparative observations and researches,
it has gradually began to emerge.

The question has often been propounded: What is it that burns in
volcanos,--What produces the heat which melts and fuses together earths
and metals? Modern chemical science has essayed to answer, that what
burns are the earths, the metals, the alkalies themselves; viz. the
metalloids of those substances. The solid and already-oxydised crust
of the globe separates the surrounding atmosphere, with the oxygen
which it contains, from the inflammable unoxydised substances in the
interior of our planet: when those metalloids come in contact with
the oxygen of the atmosphere there arises disengagement of heat.
The great and celebrated chemist who propounded this explanation of
volcanic phenomena soon himself relinquished it. Observations made
in mines and caverns in all climates, and which in concert with M.
Arago I have collected in a separate memoir, shew that, even at what
may be considered a very small depth, the temperature of the Earth is
much above the mean temperature of the atmosphere at the same place.
A fact so remarkable, and so generally confirmed, connects itself
with that which we learn from volcanic phenomena. The depth at which
the globe may be regarded as a molten mass has been calculated. The
primitive cause of this subterranean heat is, as in all planets,
the process of formation itself, the separation of the spherically
condensing mass from a cosmical gaseous fluid, and the cooling of the
terrestrial strata at different depths by the loss of heat parted
with by radiation. All volcanic phenomena are probably the result of
a communication either permanent or transient between the interior
and exterior of the globe. Elastic vapours press the molten oxydising
substances upwards through deep fissures. Volcanos might thus be termed
intermitting springs or fountains of earthy substances; _i. e._ of
the fluid mixture of metals, alkalis, and earths which solidify into
lava currents and flow softly and tranquilly, when being upheaved they
find a passage by which to escape. In a similar manner the Ancients
represented (according to Plato’s Phædon) all volcanic fiery currents
as streams flowing from the Pyriphlegethon.

To these considerations and views let me be permitted to add another
more bold. May we not find in this internal heat of our globe,--(a heat
indicated by thermometric experiments on the waters of springs rising
from different depths,[40] as well by our observations on volcanos),--a
cause which may explain one of the most wonderful phænomena with
which the study of fossils has made us acquainted? Tropical forms of
animals, and, in the vegetable kingdom, arborescent ferns, palms,
and bambusaceæ, are found buried in the cold regions of the North.
Everywhere the ancient world shews a distribution of organic forms at
variance with our present climates. To resolve so important a problem,
recourse has been had to several hypotheses; such as the approach of
a comet, a change in the obliquity of the Ecliptic, and a different
degree of intensity in the solar light. None of these explanations
are satisfactory at once to the astronomer, the physicist, and the
geologist. For my part I willingly leave the axis of the Earth in its
place, and suppose no change in the light of the solar disk (from whose
spots a celebrated astronomer was inclined to explain the favourable or
unfavourable harvests of particular years); I am disposed to recognise
that in each planet there exist, independently of its relations to
the central body of the system to which it belongs, and independently
of its astronomical position, various causes for the development of
heat;--processes of oxydation, precipitations and chemical changes in
the capacity of bodies, by increase of electro-magnetic intensity, and
communications opened between the internal and external portions of the
planet.

It may be that in the Ancient World, exhalations of heat issuing forth
through the many openings of the deeply fissured crust of the globe
may have favoured, perhaps for centuries, the growth of palms and
tree-ferns and the existence of animals requiring a high temperature,
over entire countries where now a very different climate prevails.
According to this view of things (a view already indicated by me in a
work entitled “Geological Essay on the Superposition of Rocks in both
Hemispheres”) the temperature of volcanos would be that of the interior
of the earth, and the same cause which, operating through volcanic
eruptions, now produces devastating effects, might in primeval ages
have clothed the deeply fissured rocks of the newly oxydised earth in
every zone with the most luxuriant vegetation.

If, with a view to explain the distribution of tropical forms whose
remains are now discovered buried in northern regions, it should be
assumed that the long-haired species of Elephant now found enclosed
in ice was originally indigenous in cold climates, and that forms
resembling the same leading type may, as in the case of lions and
lynxes, have been able to live in wholly different climates, still this
manner of solving the difficulty presented by fossil remains cannot be
extended so as to apply to vegetable productions. From reasons with
which the study of vegetable physiology makes us acquainted, Palms,
Musaceæ, and arborescent Monocotyledones, are incapable of supporting
the deprivation of their appendicular organs which would be caused by
the present temperature of our northern regions; and in the geological
problem which we have to examine, it appears to me difficult to
separate vegetable and animal remains from each other. The same mode of
explanation ought to comprehend both.

I have permitted myself at the conclusion of the present discussion
to connect with facts collected in different and widely separated
countries some uncertain and hypothetical conjectures. The
philosophical study of Nature rises beyond the requirements of a simple
description of Nature: it does not consist in a sterile accumulation of
isolated facts. It may sometimes be permitted to the active and curious
mind of man to stretch forward from the present to the still obscure
future; to divine that which cannot yet be clearly known; and thus to
take pleasure in the ancient myths of geology reproduced in our own
days in new and varied forms.




ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS.


[38] p. 226.--“_A more complete determination of the height of all
parts of the margin of the crater._”

Oltmanns, my astronomical fellow labourer, of whom, alas! science
has been early deprived, re-calculated the barometric measurements
of Vesuvius referred to in the preceding memoir (of the 22d and 25th
of November and of the 1st of December, 1822), and has compared the
results with the measurements which have been communicated to me in
manuscript by Lord Minto, Visconti, Monticelli, Brioschi, and Poulett
Scrope.


A. _Rocca del Palo, the highest and northern margin of the Crater of
Vesuvius._

                                                       Toises.  Eng. ft.
  Saussure, barometric measurement computed in
    1773, probably by Deluc’s formula                      609      3894
  Poli, 1794, barometric                                   606      3875
  Breislak, 1794, barometric (but, like Poli, the formula
    employed uncertain)                                    613      3920
  Gay-Lussac, Leopold von Buch, and Humboldt, 1805,
     barometric, computed by Laplace’s formula, as
     are also all the barometric results which follow      603      3856
  Brioschi, 1810, trigonometric                            638      4080
  Visconti, 1816, trigonometric                            622      3977
  Lord Minto, 1822, barometric, often repeated             621      3971
  Poulett Scrope, 1822, barometric, somewhat uncertain
    from the proportion between the diameters
    of the tube and cistern being unknown                  604      3862
  Monticelli and Covelli, 1822                             624      3990
  Humboldt, 1822                                           629      4022

Most probable result 317 toises, or 2027 English feet, above the
Hermitage; or 625 toises, or 3996 English feet, above the level of the
sea.


B. _The lowest and southern margin of the crater opposite to Bosche Tre
Case._

                                                     Toises.  Eng. ft.
  After the eruption of 1794 this edge became 400
    (426 Eng.) feet lower than the Rocca del Palo;
    therefore if we estimate the latter at 625 toises
    (3996 English feet)                                  559      3574
  Gay-Lussac, Leopold von Buch, and Humboldt,
    1805, barometric                                     534      3414
  Humboldt, 1822, barometric                             546      3491


C. _Height of the cone of scoriæ inside the crater, which fell in on
the 22d of October, 1822._

                                                   Toises.  Eng. ft.
  Lord Minto, barometric                               650      4156
  Brioschi, trigonometric, according to different
    combinations either                                636      4066
  Or                                                   641      4098

Probable final result for the height of the above-mentioned cone of
scoriæ 646 toises, or 4130 English feet.


D. _Punta Nasone, highest summit of the Somma._

                                                    Toises.  Eng. ft.
  Schuckburgh, 1794, barometric, probably computed
    by his own formula                                  584      3734
  Humboldt, 1822, barometric, Laplace’s formula         586      3747

E. _Plain of the Atrio del Cavallo._

                                                    Toises.   Eng. ft.

  Humboldt, 1822, barometric                            403      2577

F. _Foot of the cone of ashes._

                                                    Toises.   Eng. ft.


  Gay-Lussac, Leopold von Buch, and Humboldt,
    1805, barometric                                    370      2366

  Humboldt, 1822, barometric                            388      2481

G. _Hermitage del Salvatore._

                                                    Toises.   Eng. ft.


  Gay-Lussac, Leopold von Buch, and Humboldt,
    1805, barometric                                   300       1918

  Lord Minto, 1822, barometric                         307.9     1969

  Humboldt, 1822, barometric repeated                  308.7     1974

Part of my measurements have been printed in Monticelli’s Storia de’
fenomeni del Vesuvio, avvenuti negli anni 1821-1823, p. 115; but the
neglected correction for the height of the mercury in the cistern
has somewhat disfigured the results as there published. When it is
remembered that the results given in the above table were obtained
with barometers of very different constructions, at various hours of
the day, with winds from very different quarters, and on the unequally
heated declivity of a volcano, in a locality in which the decrease of
atmospheric temperature differs greatly from that which is supposed in
our barometric formulæ,--the agreement will be found to be as great as
could be expected, and quite satisfactory.

My measurements in 1822, at the time of the Congress of Verona, when
I accompanied the late King of Prussia to Naples, were made with
more care and under more favourable circumstances than those of 1805.
Differences of height are besides always to be preferred to absolute
heights, and these show that since 1794 the difference between the
heights of the edges of the crater at the Rocca del Palo and on the
side towards Bosco Tre Case has continued almost the same. I found
it in 1805 exactly 69 toises (441 English feet), and in 1822 almost
82 toises (524 English feet). A distinguished geologist, Mr Poulett
Scrope, found 74 toises (473 English feet), although the absolute
heights which he assigns to the two sides of the crater appear to be
rather too small. So little variation in a period of twenty-eight
years, in which there were such violent commotions in the interior of
the crater, is certainly a striking phænomenon.

The height attained by cones of scoriæ rising from the floor of the
crater of Vesuvius is also deserving of particular attention. In 1776
Schuckburgh found such a cone 615 toises, or 3932 English feet, above
the surface of the Mediterranean: according to the measurements of Lord
Minto, (a very accurate observer,) the cone of scoriæ which fell in
on the 22d of October, 1822, even attained the height of 650 toises,
or 4156 English feet. On both occasions, therefore, the height of the
cones of scoriæ in the crater surpassed that of the highest part of the
margin of the crater. When we compare together the measurements of the
Rocca del Palo from 1773 to 1822, we are almost involuntarily led to
entertain the bold conjecture that the north margin of the crater has
been gradually upraised by subterranean forces. The accordance of the
three measurements between 1773 and 1805 is almost as striking as that
of those taken from 1816 to 1822. In the latter period we cannot doubt
the height being from about 621 to 629 toises (3970 to 4022 English
feet). Are the measurements made from thirty to forty years earlier,
which gave only 606 to 609 toises (3875 to 3894 English feet), less
certain? At some future day, after longer periods shall have elapsed,
it will be possible to decide what is due to errors of measurement, and
what to an actual rise in the margin of the crater. There cannot be in
this case any accumulation of loose materials from above. If the solid
trachyte-like lava beds of the Rocca del Palo really become higher, we
must assume them to be upheaved from below by volcanic forces.

My learned and indefatigable friend Oltmanns has placed all the details
of the above measurements before the public, accompanied by a careful
critical examination of them, in the Abhandl. der königl. Akademie der
Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1822-1823, S. 3-20. May this investigation be
the means of inducing geologists frequently to examine hypsometrically
this low and most easily accessible (except Stromboli) of the European
volcanos, so that in the course of centuries there may be obtained a
frequently checked and accurate account of its periods of development!

[39] p. 235.--“_Where the pressure is less._”

Compare Leopold von Buch on the Peak of Teneriffe in his Physikalische
Beschreibung der canarischen Inseln, 1825, S. 213; and in the
Abhandlungen der königl. Akademie zu Berlin, 1820-1821, S. 99.

[40] p. 289--“_Waters of springs rising from different depths._”

Compare Arago in the Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes pour 1835, p.
234. The increase of temperature is in our latitudes 1° of Reaumur
(2°.25 of a degree of Fahrenheit) for every 113 Parisian feet (120.5
English feet), or 1° Fah. to 53.5 English feet nearly. In the Artesian
boring at New Salzwerk (Oeynhausen’s Bad), not far from Minden, which
is the greatest known depth below the level of the sea, the temperature
of the water at 2094-1/2 Parisian feet (2232-1/4 Eng.) is fully 26°.2
Reaumur, or 91° Fahr.; while the mean temperature of the air above may
be taken at 7°.7 Reaumur, or 49°.2 Fahr. It is very remarkable that in
the third century Saint Patricius, Bishop of Pertusa, was led by seeing
the hot springs near Carthage to a very just view respecting the cause
of such an increase of heat. (Acta S. Patricii, p. 555, ed. Ruinart;
Kosmos, Bd. i. S. 231,--English Edition, Vol. i. p. 211.)




THE

VITAL FORCE;

OR,

THE RHODIAN GENIUS.

[FIRST PRINTED IN 1795.]


The Syracusans, like the Athenians, had their Pœcile, in which
representations of gods and heroes, the works of Grecian and Italian
art, adorned the halls, glowing with varied colours. The people
resorted thither continually; the young warriors to contemplate the
exploits of their ancestors, the artists to study the works of the
great masters. Among the numerous paintings which the active zeal of
the Syracusans had collected from the mother country, there was one
which, for a century past, had particularly attracted the attention
of spectators. Sometimes the Olympian Jove, Cecrops the founder of
cities, and the heroic courage of Harmodius and Aristogiton, would
want admirers, while men pressed in crowded ranks around the picture
of which we speak. Whence this preference? Was it a rescued work of
Apelles, or of the school of Callimachus? No; it possessed indeed grace
and beauty; but yet neither in the blending of the colours, nor in the
character and style of the entire picture, could it be compared with
many other paintings in the Pœcile.

The multitude (comprehending therein many classes of society), often
regard with astonishment and admiration what they do not comprehend:
this picture had occupied its place for a hundred years; but though
Syracuse contained within the narrow limits enclosed by its walls more
of the genius of art than the whole of the remainder of sea-surrounded
Sicily, no one had yet divined the hidden meaning of the design. It was
even uncertain to what temple the painting had originally belonged,
for it had been rescued from a shipwrecked vessel, which was only
conjectured from the merchandise it contained to have come from Rhodes.

On the foreground of the picture youths and maidens formed a closely
crowded group. They were without clothing and well formed, but at the
same time did not exhibit the more noble and graceful proportions
admired in the statues of Praxiteles and Alcamenes. Their robust limbs,
shewing the traces of laborious efforts, and the purely terrestrial
expression of their desires and sorrows, seemed to take from them every
thing of a diviner character, and to chain them exclusively to their
earthly habitation. Their hair was simply ornamented with leaves and
field-flowers. Their arms were outstretched towards each other, as
if to indicate their desire of union, but their troubled looks were
turned towards a Genius who, surrounded by bright light, hovered in
the midst. A butterfly was placed on his shoulder, and in his hand he
held on high a lighted torch. The contours of his form were soft and
child-like, but his glance was animated by celestial fire: he looked
down as a master upon the youths and maidens at his feet. Nothing else
that was characteristic could be discovered in the picture. Some
persons thought they could make out at its foot the letters ζ and ς,
from whence (as antiquaries were then no less bold in their conjectures
than they now are), they took occasion to infer, in a somewhat forced
manner, the name of Zenodorus; thus attributing the work to a painter
of the same name as the artist who at a later period cast the Colossus
of Rhodes.

The “Rhodian Genius,” however,--for such was the name given to the
picture,--did not want for commentators and interpreters in Syracuse.
Amateurs of the arts, and especially the younger amongst them, on
returning from a short visit to Corinth or Athens, would have thought
it equivalent to renouncing all pretensions to connoisseurship if
they had not been provided with some new explanation. Some regarded
the Genius as the personification of Spiritual Love, forbidding the
enjoyment of sensual pleasures; others said it was the assertion of the
empire of Reason over Desire: the wiser among the critics were silent,
and presuming some high though yet undiscovered meaning, examined
meanwhile with pleasure the simple composition of the picture.

Still, however, the question remained unsolved. The picture had been
copied with various additions and sent to Greece, but not the least
light had been thrown on its origin; when at length, at the season
of the early rising of the Pleiades, and soon after the reopening
of the navigation of the Egean Sea, ships from Rhodes entered the
port of Syracuse, bearing a precious collection of statues, altars,
candelabras, and paintings, which Dionysius’s love of art had caused
to be brought together from different parts of Greece. Among the
paintings was one which was immediately recognised as the companion
or pendent of the Rhodian Genius: the dimensions were the same, and
the colouring similar, but in a better state of preservation: the
Genius was still the central figure, but the butterfly was no longer
on his shoulder; his head was drooping, and his torch extinguished
and inverted. The youths and maidens pressing around him had met
and embraced; their glance, no longer subdued or sad, announced, on
the contrary, emancipation from restraint, and the fulfilment of
long-cherished desires.

The Syracusan antiquaries were already seeking to modify the
explanations they had previously proposed, so as to adapt them to
the newly-arrived picture, when Dionysius commanded the latter to be
carried to the house of Epicharmus, a philosopher of the Pythagorean
school, who dwelt in a remote part of Syracuse called Tyche. Epicharmus
rarely presented himself at the court of Dionysius, for although the
latter was fond of calling around him the most distinguished men from
all the Greek colonial cities, yet the philosopher found that the
proximity of princes takes even from men of the greatest intellectual
power part of their spirit and their freedom. He devoted himself
unceasingly to the study of natural things, their forces or powers, the
origin of animals and plants, and the harmonious laws in accordance
with which the heavenly bodies, as well as the grains of hail and the
flakes of snow, assume their distinctive forms. Oppressed with age,
and unable to proceed far without assistance, he caused himself to be
conducted daily to the Pœcile, and thence to the entrance of the port,
where, as he said, his eyes received the image of the boundless and
the infinite which his spirit ever strove in vain to apprehend. He
lived honoured alike by the tyrant, whose presence he avoided, and by
the lower classes of the people, whom he met gladly, and often with
friendly help.

Exhausted with fatigue, he was reposing on his couch, when the
newly-arrived picture was brought to him by the command of Dionysius.
Care had been taken to bring, at the same time, a faithful copy of the
“Rhodian Genius,” and the philosopher desired the two paintings to be
placed side by side before him. After having remained for some time
with his eyes fixed upon them, and absorbed in thought, he called his
scholars together, and spoke to them in the following terms, in a voice
which was not without emotion:--

“Withdraw the curtain from the window, that I may enjoy once more
the view of the fair earth animated with living beings. During sixty
years I have reflected on the internal motive powers of nature, and
on the differences of substances: to-day for the first time the
picture of the Rhodian Genius leads me to see more clearly that which
I had before only obscurely divined. As living beings are impelled by
natural desires to salutary and fruitful union, so the raw materials
of inorganic nature are moved by similar impulses. Even in the reign
of primeval night, in the darkness of chaos, elementary principles or
substances sought or shunned each other in obedience to indwelling
dispositions of amity or enmity. Thus the fire of heaven follows metal,
iron obeys the attraction of the loadstone, amber rubbed takes up
light substances, earth mixes with earth, salt collects together from
the water of the sea, and the acid moisture of the Stypteria (στυπτηρια
υγρα), as well as the flocculent salt Trichitis, love the clay of
Melos. In inanimate nature all things hasten to unite with each other
according to their particular laws. Hence no terrestrial element (and
who would dare to include light among the number of such elements?) is
to be found anywhere in its pure and primitive simple state. Each as
soon as formed tends to enter into new combinations, and the art of man
is needed to disjoin and present in a separated state substances which
you would seek in vain in the interior of the earth, and in the fluid
oceans of air or water. In dead inorganic matter, entire inactivity and
repose reign so long as the bonds of affinity continue undissolved, so
long as no third substance comes to join itself to the others. But even
then, the action and disturbance produced are soon again succeeded by
unfruitful repose.

“It is otherwise, however, when the same substances are brought
together in the bodies of plants and animals. In these the vital force
or power reigns supreme, and regardless of the mutual amity or enmity
of the atoms recognised by Democritus, commands the union of substances
which in inanimate nature shun each other, and separates those which
are ever seeking to enter into combination.

“Now come nearer to me, my friends; look with me on the first of
the pictures before us, and recognise in the Rhodian Genius, in the
expression of youthful energy, in the butterfly on his shoulder,
and in the commanding glance of his eye, the symbol of vital force
animating each individual germ of the organic creation. At his feet are
the earthy elements desiring to mix and unite, conformably to their
particular tendencies. The Genius, holding aloft his lighted torch with
commanding gesture, controls and constrains them, without regard to
their ancient rights, to obey his laws.

“Now view with me the new picture which the tyrant has sent to me
for explanation: turn your eyes from the image of life to that of
death. The butterfly has left its former place and soars upwards; the
extinguished torch is reversed, the head of the youth has sunk: the
spirit has fled to other spheres, and the vital force is dead. Now the
youths and maidens joyfully join hands, the earthy substances resume
their ancient rights: they are freed from the chains that bound them,
and follow impetuously after long restraint the impulse to union.--Thus
inert matter, animated awhile by vital force, passes through an
innumerable diversity of forms, and perhaps in the same substance which
once enshrined the spirit of Pythagoras, a poor worm may have enjoyed a
momentary existence.

“Go, Polycles, and tell Dionysius what thou hast heard;--and you my
friends, Euryphamos, Lysis, and Scopas, come nearer to me and support
me; I feel that in my weakened frame the enfeebled vital power will
not long hold in subjection the earthly substances which reclaim their
ancient liberty. Lead me once again to the Pœcile, and thence to the
sea shore; soon you will collect my ashes.”




NOTE.


I have noticed in the Preface to the Second and Third Editions (S.
xiii., p. xii. English Trans.) the subject of the republication here
of the preceding pages, which were first printed in Schiller’s Horen
(Jahrg. 1795, St. 5, S. 90-96). They contain the development of a
physiological idea clothed in a semi-mythical garb. In the Latin
“Aphorisms from the Chemical Physiology of Plants” appended to my
“Subterranean Flora,” in 1793,--I had defined the “vital force” as
“the unknown cause which prevents the elements from following their
original affinities.” The first of my aphorisms were as follows:--Rerum
naturam si totam consideres, magnum atque durabile, quod inter elementa
intercedit, discrimen perspicies, quorum altera affinitatum legibus
obtemperantia, altera, vinculis solutis, varie juncta apparent. Quod
quidem discrimen in elementis ipsis eorumque indole neutiquam positum,
quum ex sola distributione singulorum petendum esse videatur. Materiam
segnem, brutam, inanimam eam vocamus, cujus stamina secundum leges
chymicæ affinitatis mixta sunt. Animata atque organica ea potissimum
corpora appellamus, quæ, licet in novas mutari formas perpetuo tendant,
vi interna quadam continentur, quominus priscam sibique insitam formam
relinquant.

“Vim internam, quæ chymicæ affinitatis vincula resolvit, atque obstat,
quominus elementa corporum libere conjungantur, vitalem vocamus. Itaque
nullum certius mortis criterium putredine datur, qua primæ partes vel
stamina rerum, antiquis juribus revocatis, affinitatum legibus parent.
Corporum inanimorum nulla putredo esse potest.” (Vide Aphorismi ex
doctrina Physiologiæ chemicæ Plantarum, in Humboldt, Flora Fribergensis
subterranea, 1793, p. 133-136).

I have placed in the mouth of Epicharmus the above propositions,
which were disapproved by the acute Vicq d’Azyr, in his Traité
d’Anatomie et de Physiologie, T. i. p. 5, but are now entertained by
many distinguished persons among my friends. Reflection and continued
study in the domains of physiology and chemistry have deeply shaken
my earlier belief in a peculiar so-called vital force. In 1797, at
the close of my work entitled “Versuche über die gereizte Muskel und
Nervenfaser, nebst Vermuthungen über den chemischen Process des Lebens
in der Thier und Pflanzenwelt” (Bd. ii. S. 430-436), I already declared
that I by no means regarded the existence of such peculiar vital forces
as demonstrated. Since that time I have no longer called peculiar
forces what may possibly only be the operation of the concurrent action
of the several long-known substances and their material forces. We may,
however deduce from the chemical relations of the elements a safer
definition of animate and inanimate substances, than the criteria which
are taken from voluntary motion, from the circulation of fluids within
solids, from internal appropriation, and from the fibrous arrangements
of the elements. I term that an animated substance “of which the parts
being separated by external agency alter their state of composition
after the separation, all other and external relations continuing
the same.” This definition is merely the enunciation of a fact. The
equilibrium of the elements in animated or organic matter is preserved
by their being parts of a whole. One organ determines another, one
gives to another its temperature and tone or disposition, in all which,
these, and no other, affinities are operative. Thus in organised beings
all is reciprocally means and end. The rapidity with which organic
parts, separated from a complete living organism, change their slate of
combination, differs greatly, according to the degree of their original
dependence, and to the nature of the substance. Blood of animals, which
varies much in the different classes, suffers change sooner than the
juices of plants. Funguses generally decay sooner than leaves of trees,
and muscle more easily than the cutis.

Bones, the elementary structure of which has been very recently
recognised, hair of animals, wood in plants or trees, the feathery
appendages of seeds of plants (Pappus), are not inorganic or without
life; but even in life they approximate to the state in which they are
found after their separation from the rest of the organism. The higher
the degree of vitality or susceptibility of an animated substance,
the more rapidly does organic change in its composition ensue after
separation. “The aggregate total of the cells is an organism, and the
organism lives so long as the parts are active in subservience to
the whole. In opposition to lifeless or inorganic, organic nature
_appears_ to be self-determining.” (Henle, Allgemeine Anatomie, 1841,
S. 216-219). The difficulty of satisfactorily referring the vital
phenomena of organic life to physical and chemical laws, consists
chiefly (almost as in the question of predicting meteorological
processes in the atmosphere), in the complication of the phænomena,
and in the multiplicity of simultaneously acting forces and of the
conditions of their activity.

I have remained faithful in “Kosmos” to the same mode of viewing
and representing what are called “Lebenskräfte,” vital forces, and
vital affinities, (Pulteney, in the Transact. of the Royal Soc.
of Edinburgh, vol. xvi. p. 305), the formation-impulse, and the
active principle in organisation. I have said, in Kosmos, Bd. i. S.
67, (English Ed. vol. i. p. 62), “The myths of imponderable matter
and of vital forces peculiar to each organism have complicated and
perplexed the view of nature. Under different conditions and forms
of recognition the prodigious mass of our experimental knowledge
has progressively accumulated, and is now enlarging with increased
rapidity. Investigating reason essays from time to time with varying
success to break through ancient forms and symbols, invented to
effect the subjection of rebellious matter, as it were, to mechanical
constructions.” Farther on in the same volume, (p. 339 English, and
367 of the original,) I have said, “In a physical description of the
universe, it should still be noticed that the same substances which
compose the organic forms of plants and animals are also found in the
inorganic crust of the globe; and that the same forces or powers which
govern inorganic matter are seen to prevail in organic beings likewise,
combining and decomposing the various substances, regulating the forms
and properties of organic tissues, but acting in these cases under
complicated conditions yet unexplained, to which the very vague terms
of ‘vital phænomena,’ ‘operations of vital forces,’ have been assigned,
and which have been systematically grouped, according to analogies more
or less happily imagined.” (Compare also the critical notices on the
assumption of proper or peculiar vital forces in Schleiden’s Botanik
als inductive Wissenchaft (Botany as an Inductive Science), Th. i.
S. 60, and in the recently published excellent Untersuchungen über
thierische Elektricität (Researches on Animal Electricity), by Emil du
Bois-Reymond, Bd. i. S. xxxiv.-l.)




  THE

  PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA,

  THE

  ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE INCA ATAHUALLPA:

  AND

  THE FIRST VIEW OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN,

  FROM THE CREST OF THE ANDES.


After a residence of an entire year on the crest of the chain of the
Andes or Antis[41], between 4° North and 4° South Latitude, in the
high plains of New Granada, Pastos, and Quito, whose mean elevations
range between 8500 and 12800 English feet, we rejoiced in descending
gradually through the milder climate of the Quina-yielding forests of
Loxa to the plains of the upper part of the course of the Amazons,
a terra incognita rich in magnificent vegetation. The small town of
Loxa has given its name to the most efficacious of all the species of
medicinal Fever-Bark: Quina, or Cascarilla fina de Loxa. It is the
precious production of the tree which we have described botanically as
Cinchona condaminea, but which, under the erroneous impression that
all the kinds of the Quina or fever bark of commerce were furnished
by the same species of tree, had previously been called Cinchona
officinalis. The Fever Bark was first brought to Europe towards the
middle of the seventeenth century, either, as Sebastian Badus asserts,
to Alcala de Henares in 1632, or to Madrid in 1640, on the arrival of
the wife of the Viceroy, the Countess of Chinchon[42], who had been
cured of intermittent fever at Lima, accompanied by her physician,
Juan del Vego. The trees which yield the finest quality of Quina de
Loxa are found from 8 to 12 miles to the south east of the town, in
the mountains of Uritusinga, Villonaco, and Rumisitana, growing on
mica-slate and gneiss, at very moderate elevations above the level of
the sea, being between 5400 and 7200 (5755 and 7673 English) feet,
heights about equal respectively to those of the Hospice on the Grimsel
and the Pass of the great St. Bernard. The proper boundaries of the
Quina-woods in this quarter are the small rivers Zamora and Cachiyacu.

The tree is cut down in its first flowering season, or in the
fourth or seventh year of its age, according as it has sprung from
a vigorous root-shoot, or from a seed: we heard with astonishment
that at the period of my journey, according to official computations,
the collectors of Quina (Cascarilleros and Cazadores de Quina, Quina
Hunters),--only brought in 110 hundred weight of the Bark of the
Cinchona condaminea annually. None of this precious store found its way
at that time into commerce; the whole was sent from the port of Payta
on the Pacific, round Cape Horn to Cadiz, for the use of the Spanish
Court. In order to furnish this small quantity of 11000 Spanish pounds,
eight or nine hundred trees were cut down every year. The older and
thicker stems have become more and more scarce; but the luxuriance of
vegetation is such that the younger trees which are now resorted to,
though only 6 inches in diameter, often attain from 53 to 64 English
feet in height. This beautiful tree, which is adorned with leaves
above 5 English inches long and 2 broad, growing in dense woods, seems
always to aspire to rise above its neighbours. As its upper branches
wave to and fro in the wind, their red and shining foliage produces a
strange and peculiar effect recognisable from a great distance. The
mean temperature in the woods where the Cinchona condaminea is found,
ranges between 12-1/2° and 15° Reaumur (60°.2 and 65°.8 Fahrenheit),
which are about the mean annual temperatures of Florence and the Island
of Madeira; but the extremes of heat and cold observed at these two
stations of the temperate zone are never felt around Loxa. Comparisons
between the climates of places, one of which is situated in an elevated
tropical plain, and the other in a higher parallel of latitude, can be
from their nature but little satisfactory.

In order to descend South-South-East from the mountain knot of Loxa to
the hot Valley of the Amazons, it is first necessary to pass over the
_Paramos_ of Chulucanas, Guamani and Yamoca,--mountain wildernesses of
a peculiar character of which we have already spoken, and to which, in
the southern parts of the Andes, the name of Puna (a word belonging
to the Quichua language) is given. They mostly rise above 9500 (10125
English) feet; they are stormy, often enveloped for days in dense mist,
or visited by violent and formidable showers of hail,--consisting not
merely of hailstones of different spherical forms, usually a good
deal flattened by rotation, but also sometimes of less regular forms,
the hail having run together into thin plates of ice (papa-cara) which
cut the face and hands. At such times I have occasionally seen the
thermometer sink to 7° or 5° Reaumur, (47°.8 and 43°.2 Fahr.) and the
electric tension of the atmosphere, measured by Volta’s electrometer,
pass in a few minutes from positive to negative. When the temperature
sinks below 5° Reaumur, (43°.2 Fahrenheit) snow falls in large and
thinly scattered flakes. The vegetation of the Paramos has a peculiar
physiognomy and character, from the absence of trees, the short close
branches of the small-leaved myrtle-like shrubs, the large sized and
numerous blossoms, and the perpetual freshness of the whole from the
constant and abundant supply of moisture. No zone of Alpine vegetation
in the temperate or cold parts of the globe can well be compared with
that of the Paramos in the tropical Andes.

The impressions produced on the mind by the natural characters of these
wildernesses of the Cordilleras are heightened in a remarkable and
unexpected manner, from its being in those very regions that we still
see admirable remains of the gigantic work, the artificial road of the
Incas, which formed a line of communication through all the provinces
of the Empire, extending over a length of more than a thousand English
geographical miles. We find, placed at nearly equal distances apart,
stations consisting of dwelling houses built of well-cut stone; they
are a kind of Caravanserai, and are called Tambos and sometimes
Inca-pilca (from _pircca_, the wall?). Some of them are surrounded
by a kind of fortification; others were constructed for baths with
arrangements for conducting hot water; the larger were designed for
the use of the family of the Monarch himself. I had previously seen,
measured, and drawn with care, buildings of the same kind in a good
state of preservation at the foot of the volcano of Cotopaxi, near
Callo. Pedro de Cieça, writing in the 16th century, called them
“Aposentos de Mulalo.”[43] In the pass between Alausi and Loxa, called
the Paramo del Assuay,--(a much frequented route across the Ladera de
Cadlud, 14568 French or 15526 English feet above the level of the sea,
or almost equal to the height of Mont Blanc),--as we were leading our
heavily laden mules with great difficulty through the marshy ground
on the elevated plain del Pullal, our eyes meanwhile were continually
dwelling on the grand remains of the Inca’s road, which with a breadth
of twenty-one English feet ran by our side for above a German mile.
It had a deep under-structure, and was paved with well-cut blocks of
blackish trap-porphyry. Nothing that I had seen of the remains of Roman
roads in Italy, in the South of France, and in Spain, was more imposing
than these works of the ancient Peruvians, which are moreover situated,
according to my barometric measurements, at an elevation of 12440
(13258 English) feet above the sea, or more than a thousand feet higher
than the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe. The ruins of what is called
the Palace of the Inca Tupac Yupanqui, and which are known by the name
of the “Paredones del Inca,” are situated at the same elevation on the
Assuay. Proceeding from thence to the southward towards Cuenca, the
road leads to the small but well preserved fortress of Cañar[44],
belonging probably to the same period, that of Tupac Yupanqui, or to
that of his warlike son, Huayna Capac.

We saw still finer remains of the old Peruvian artificial roads on
the way between Loxa and the Amazons, at the Baths of the Incas
on the Paramo de Chulucanas, not far from Guancabamba, and in the
neighbourhood of Ingatambo, at Pomahuaca. These last named remains are
at a so much lower elevation, that I found the difference of level
between the Inca’s Road at Pomahuaca and that on the Paramo del Assuay
upwards of 9100 (about 9700 English) feet. The distance in a straight
line is by astronomically determined latitudes exactly 184 English
geographical miles, and the ascent of the road is 3500 (3730 English)
feet greater than the height of the Pass of Mount Cenis above the Lake
of Como. There are two great artificial Peruvian paved roads or systems
of roads, covered with flat stones, or sometimes even with cemented
gravel[45] (Macadamised); one passes through the wide and arid plain
between the Pacific Ocean and the chain of the Andes, and the other
over the ridges of the Cordilleras. Mile-stones, or stones marking the
distances, are often found placed at equal intervals. The road was
conducted across rivers and deep ravines by three kinds of bridges,
stone, wood, and rope bridges (Puentes de Hamaca or de Maroma), and
there were also aqueducts, or arrangements for bringing water to the
Tambos, (hostelries or caravanserais) and to the fortresses. Both
systems of roads were directed to the central point, Cuzco, the seat of
government of the great empire, in 13° 31´ South latitude, and which
is placed, according to Pentland’s map of Bolivia, 10676 Paris or 11378
English feet above the level of the sea. As the Peruvians employed no
wheel carriages, and the roads were consequently only designed for the
march of troops, for men carrying burdens, and for lightly laden lamas,
we find them occasionally interrupted, on account of the steepness of
the mountains, by long flights of steps, provided with resting places
at suitable intervals. Francisco Pizarro and Diego Almagro, who on
their distant expeditions used the military roads of the Incas with so
much advantage, found great difficulties for the Spanish Cavalry at
the places where these steps occurred[46]. The impediment presented to
their march on these occasions was so much the greater, because in the
early times of the Conquista, the Spaniards used only horses instead
of the carefully treading mule, who in the difficult parts of the
mountains seems to deliberate on every step he takes. It was not until
a later period that mules were employed.

Sarmiento, who saw the Roads of the Incas whilst they were still in
a perfect state of preservation, asks in a “Relacion” which long
lay unread, buried in the Library of the Escorial, “how a nation
unacquainted with the use of iron could have completed such grand
works in so high and rocky a region (“Caminos tan grandes y tan
sovervios”), extending from Cuzco to Quito on the one hand, and to
the coast of Chili on the other? The Emperor Charles,” he adds, “with
all his power could not accomplish even a part of what the well-ordered
Government of the Incas effected through the obedient people over
whom they ruled.” Hernando Pizarro, the most educated and civilised
of the three brothers, who for his misdeeds suffered a twenty years’
imprisonment at Medina del Campo, and died at last at a hundred years
of age “in the odour of sanctity,” “en olor de Santidad,” exclaims:
“in the whole of Christendom there are nowhere such fine roads as
those which we here admire.” The two important capitals and seats of
government of the Incas, Cuzco and Quito, are 1000 English geographical
miles apart in a straight line (SS.E., NN.W.), without reckoning the
many windings of the way; and including the windings, the distance
is estimated by Garcilaso de la Vega and other Conquistadores at
“500 leguas.” Notwithstanding the great distance, we learn from the
well-confirmed testimony of the Licentiate Polo de Ondegardo, that
Huayna Capac, whose father had conquered Quito, caused some of the
building materials for the “princely buildings,” (the houses of the
Incas) in the latter city, to be brought from Cuzco.

When enterprising races inhabit a land where the form of the ground
presents to them difficulties on a grand scale which they may
encounter and overcome, this contest with nature becomes a means of
increasing their strength and power as well as their courage. Under the
despotic centralizing system of the Inca-rule, security and rapidity
of communication, especially in the movement of troops, became an
important necessity of government. Hence the construction of artificial
roads on so grand a scale, and hence also the establishment of a highly
improved postal system. Among nations in very different stages of
cultivation we see the national activity display itself with peculiar
predilection in some particular directions, but we can by no means
determine the general state of culture of a people from the striking
development of such particular and partial activity. Egyptians,
Greeks[47], Etruscans, and Romans, Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos,
shew many interesting contrasts in these respects. It is difficult to
pronounce what length of time may have been required for the execution
of the Peruvian roads. The great works in the northern part of the
Empire of the Incas, in the highlands of Quito, must at all events have
been completed in less than 30 or 35 years; _i. e._ within the short
period intervening between the defeat of the Ruler of “Quitu” and the
death of Huayna Capac, but entire obscurity prevails as to the period
of the formation of the Southern, and more properly speaking Peruvian,
roads.

The mysterious appearance of Manco Capac is usually placed 400 years
before the landing of Pizarro in the Island of Puna (1532), therefore
towards the middle of the 12th century, almost 200 years before the
foundation of the city of Mexico (Tenochtitlan); some Spanish writers
even reckon, instead of 400, 500 and 550 years between Manco Capac and
Pizarro. But the history of the empire of Peru only recognises thirteen
ruling princes of the Inca-dynasty, a number which, as Prescott very
justly remarks, is not sufficient to occupy so long an interval as 550
or even 400 years. Quetzalcoatl, Botschica, and Manco Capac, are the
three mythical forms with which the commencements of civilisation among
the Aztecs, the Muyscas (more properly Chibchas), and the Peruvians,
are connected. Quetzalcoatl, bearded, clothed in black, a high priest
of Tula, subsequently a penance-performing anchorite on a mountain
near Tlaxapuchicalco, comes to the highlands of Mexico from the coast
of Panuco; therefore from the eastern coast of Anahuac. Botschica,
or rather Nemterequeteba[48] (a Buddha of the Muyscas), a messenger
sent by the Deity, bearded and wearing long garments, arrives in the
high plains of Bogota from the grassy steppes east of the chain of the
Andes. Before Manco Capac a degree of civilisation already prevailed
on the picturesque shores of the Lake of Titicaca. The strong fort
of Cuzco, on the hill of Sacsahuaman, was formed on the pattern of
the older constructions of Tiahuanaco. In the same manner the Aztecs
imitated the pyramidal structures of the Toltecs, and these, those of
the Olmecs (Hulmecs); and gradually ascending, we arrive, still on
historic ground in Mexico, as far back as the sixth century of our Era.
According to Siguenza, the Toltec step-pyramid (or Teocalli) of Cholula
is a repetition of the form of the Hulmec step-pyramid of Teotihuacan.
Thus as we penetrate through each successive stratum of civilisation we
arrive at an earlier one; and national self-consciousness not having
awoke simultaneously in the two continents, we find in each nation the
imaginative mythical domain always immediately preceding the period of
historic knowledge.

Notwithstanding the tribute of admiration which the first
Conquistadores paid to the roads and aqueducts of the Peruvians, not
only did they neglect the repair and preservation of both these classes
of useful works, but they even wantonly destroyed them; and this
still more towards the sea-coast, (for the sake of obtaining fine cut
stones for new buildings; and where the want of water consequent on the
destruction of the aqueducts has rendered the soil barren), than on the
ridges of the Andes, or in the deep-cleft valleys by which the mountain
chain is intersected. In the long day’s journey from the syenitic rocks
of Zaulaca to the Valley of San Felipe (rich in fossils, and situated
at the foot of the icy Paramo de Yamoca), we were obliged to wade
through the Rio de Guancabamba (which flows into the Amazons), no less
than twenty-seven times, on account of the windings of the stream;
while we continually saw near us, running in a straight line along the
side of a steep precipice, the remains of the high built road of the
Incas with its Tambos. The mountain torrent, though only from 120 to
150 English feet broad, was so strong and rapid that, in fording it,
our heavily laden mules were often in danger of being swept away by the
flood. They carried our manuscripts, our dried plants, and all that
we had been collecting for a year past. Under such circumstances one
watches from the other side of the stream with very anxious suspense
until the long train of eighteen or twenty beasts of burden have passed
in safety.

The same Rio de Guancabamba, in the lower part of its course, where it
has many falls and rapids, is made to serve in a very singular manner
for the conveyance of correspondence with the coast of the Pacific. In
order to expedite more quickly the few letters from Truxillo which are
intended for the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, a “swimming courier,”
“el correo que nada,” as he is called in the country, is employed. This
post messenger, who is usually a young Indian, swims in two days from
Pomahuaca to Tomependa, first by the Rio de Chamaya (the name given to
the lower part of the Rio de Guancabamba), and then by the Amazons. He
carefully places the few letters entrusted to him in a large cotton
handkerchief, which he winds round his head in the manner of a turban.
When he comes to waterfalls he leaves the river, and makes a circuit
through the woods. In order to lessen the fatigue of swimming for so
long a time, he sometimes throws one arm round a piece of a very light
kind of wood (Ceiba, Palo de balsa), of a tree belonging to the family
of Bombaceæ. Sometimes also a friend goes with him to bear him company.
The pair have no concern about provisions, as they are always sure of a
hospitable reception in any of the scattered huts, which are abundantly
surrounded with fruit trees, in the beautiful Huertas de Pucara and
Cavico.

Happily the river is free from crocodiles, which, in the upper part of
the Amazons, are first met with below the cataracts of Mayasi. These
unwieldy and slothful monsters generally prefer the more tranquil
waters. According to my measurements the Rio de Chamaya, from the Ford
(Paso) de Pucara to the place where it enters the Amazons River below
the village of Choros, has a fall[49] of 1668 (1778 English) feet in
the short space of 52 English geographical miles. The Governor of the
province of Jaen de Bracamoros assured me that letters carried by this
singular water-post were rarely either wetted or lost. Soon after my
return to Europe from Mexico, I received, in Paris, letters from
Tomependa, which had been sent in the manner above described. Several
tribes of wild Indians, living on the banks of the Upper Amazons, make
their journeys in a similar manner, swimming down the stream sociably
in parties. I had the opportunity of seeing in this manner, in the bed
of the river, the heads of thirty or forty persons (men, women, and
children), of the tribe of the Xibaros, on their arrival at Tomependa.
The “Correo que nada” returns by land by the difficult route of the
Paramo del Paredon.

On approaching the hot climate of the basin of the Amazons, the eye is
cheered by the aspect of a beautiful, and occasionally very luxuriant
vegetation. We had never before, not even in the Canaries or on the hot
sea coast of Cumana and Caraccas, seen finer orange trees than those of
the Huertas de Pucara. They were principally the sweet orange (Citrus
aurantium, Risso), and less frequently the bitter or Seville orange (C.
vulgaris, Risso). Laden with many thousands of their golden fruits,
they attain a height of sixty or sixty-four English feet; and, instead
of rounded tops or crowns, have aspiring branches, almost like a laurel
or bay tree. Not far from thence, near the Ford of Cavico, we were
surprised by a very unexpected sight. We saw a grove of small trees,
only about eighteen or nineteen English feet high, which, instead of
green, had apparently perfectly red or rose-coloured leaves. It was a
new species of Bougainvillæa, a genus first established by the elder
Jussieu, from a Brazilian specimen in Commerson’s herbarium. The trees
were almost entirely without true leaves, as what we took for leaves
at a distance, proved to be thickly crowded bracteas. The appearance
was altogether different, in the purity and freshness of the colour,
from the autumnal tints which, in many of our forest trees, adorn the
woods of the temperate zone at the season of the fall of the leaf.
A single species of the South African family of Proteaceæ, Rhopala
ferruginea, descends here from the cold heights of the Paramo de
Yamoca to the hot plain of Chamaya. We often found here the Porlieria
hygrometrica (belonging to the Zygophylleæ), which, by the closing of
the leaflets of its finely pinnated foliage, foretels an impending
change of weather, and especially the approach of rain, much better
than any of the Mimosaceæ. It very rarely deceived us.

We found at Chamaya rafts (balsas) in readiness to convey us to
Tomependa, which we desired to visit for the purpose of determining the
difference of longitude between Quito and the mouth of the Chinchipe
(a determination of some importance to the geography of South America
on account of an old observation of La Condamine).[50] We slept as
usual under the open sky on the sandy shore (Playa de Guayanchi) at
the confluence of the Rio de Chamaya with the Amazons. The next day
we embarked on the latter river, and descended it to the Cataracts
and Narrows (Pongo in the Quichua language, from puncu, door or gate)
of Rentema, where rocks of coarse-grained sandstone (conglomerate)
rise like towers, and form a rocky dam across the river. I measured
a base line on the flat and sandy shore, and found that at Tomependa
the afterwards mighty River of the Amazons is only a little above
1386 English feet across. In the celebrated River Narrow or Pongo of
Manseritche, between Santiago and San Borja, in a mountain ravine
where at some points the overhanging rocks and the canopy of foliage
forbid more than a very feeble light to penetrate, and where all the
drift wood, consisting of a countless number of trunks of trees, is
broken and dashed in pieces, the breadth of the stream is under 160
English feet. The rocks by which all these Pongos or Narrows are formed
undergo many changes in the course of centuries. Thus a part of the
rocks forming the Pongo de Rentema, spoken of above, had been broken
up by a high flood a year before my journey; and there has even been
preserved among the inhabitants, by tradition, a lively recollection
of the precipitous fall of the then towering masses of rock along the
whole of the Pongo,--an event which took place in the early part of
the eighteenth century. This fall, and the consequent blocking up of
the channel, arrested the flow of the stream; and the inhabitants of
the village of Puyaya, situated below the Pongo de Rentema, saw with
alarm the wide river-bed entirely dry: but after a few hours the waters
again forced their way. Earthquake movements are not supposed to have
occasioned this remarkable occurrence. The powerful stream appears to
be as it were incessantly engaged in improving its bed, and some idea
of the force which it exerts may be formed from the circumstance, that
notwithstanding its breadth it is sometimes so swollen as to rise more
than 26 English feet in the course of twenty or thirty hours.

We remained for seventeen days in the hot valley of the Upper Marañon
or Amazons. In order to pass from thence to the shores of the Pacific,
the Andes have to be crossed at the point where, between Micuipampa
and Caxamarca (in 6° 57´ S. lat. and 78° 34´ W. long. from Greenwich),
they are intersected, according to my observations, by the magnetic
equator. Ascending to a still higher elevation among the mountains,
the celebrated silver mines of Chota are reached, and from thence
with a few interruptions the route descends until the low grounds of
Peru are gained; passing intermediately over the ancient Caxamarca,
where 316 years ago the most sanguinary drama in the annals of the
Spanish Conquista took place, and also over Aroma and Gangamarca.
Here, as almost everywhere in the Chain of the Andes and in the
Mexican Mountains, the most elevated parts are picturesquely marked
by tower-like outbreaks of porphyry (often columnar), and trachyte.
Masses of this kind give to the crest of the mountains sometimes a
cliff-like and precipitous, and sometimes a dome-shaped character. They
have here broken through calcareous rocks, which, both on this and on
the northern side of the equator, are largely developed; and which,
according to Leopold von Buch’s researches, belong to the cretaceous
group. Between Guambos and Montan, 12000 French (12790 English) feet
above the sea, we found marine fossils[51] (Ammonites nearly fifteen
English inches in diameter, the large Pecten alatus, oyster shells,
Echini, Isocardias, and Exogyra polygona). A species of Cidaris, which,
according to Leopold von Buch, cannot be distinguished from that which
Brongniart found in the lower part of the chalk series at the Perte
du Rhone, was collected by us, both at Tomependa in the basin of the
Amazons and at Micuipampa,--stations of which the elevations differ
9900 (10551 English) feet. In a similar manner, in the Amuich Chain
of the Caucasian Daghestan, the cretaceous beds rise from the banks
of the Sulak, which are hardly 530 English feet above the sea, to a
height of fully 9000 (9592 English) feet on the Tschunum; while on
the summit of the Schadagh Mountain, 13090 (13950 English) feet high,
the Ostrea diluviana (Goldf.) and the same cretaceous beds are again
found. Abich’s excellent observations in the Caucasus would thus appear
to have confirmed in the most brilliant manner Leopold von Buch’s
geological views on the mountain development of the cretaceous group.

From the lonely grazing farm of Montan surrounded by herds of lamas, we
ascended more to the south the eastern declivity of the Cordilleras,
and arrived as night was closing in at an elevated plain where the
argentiferous mountain of Gualgayoc, the principal site of the
celebrated silver mines of Chota, afforded us a remarkable spectacle.
The Cerro de Gualgayoc, separated by a deep-cleft ravine or valley
(Quebrada) from the limestone mountain of Cormolatsche, is an isolated
mass of siliceous rock traversed by a multitude of veins of silver
which often meet or intersect, and terminated to the north and west by
a deep and almost perpendicular precipice. The highest workings are
1445 (1540 English) feet above the floor of the gallery, the Socabon de
Espinachi. The outline of the mountain is broken by numerous tower-like
and pyramidal points; the summit bears indeed the name of “Las Puntas,”
and offers the most decided contrast to the “rounded outlines” which
the miners are accustomed to attribute to metalliferous districts
generally. “Our mountain,” said a rich possessor of mines with whom we
had arrived, “stands there like an enchanted castle (como si fuese un
castillo encantado).” The Gualgayoc reminds the beholder in some degree
of a cone of dolomite, but still more of the serrated crest of the
Monserrat Mountains in Catalonia, which I have also visited, and which
were subsequently described in so pleasing a manner by my brother. The
silver mountain Gualgayoc, besides being perforated to its summit by
many hundred galleries driven in every direction, presents also natural
openings in the mass of the siliceous rock, through which the intensely
dark blue sky of these elevated regions is visible to a spectator
standing at the foot of the mountain. These openings are popularly
called “windows,” “las ventanillas de Gualgayoc.” Similar “windows”
were pointed out to us in the trachytic walls of the volcano of
Pichincha, and called by a similar name,--“ventanillas de Pichincha.”
The strangeness of the view presented to us was still farther increased
by the numerous small sheds and dwelling-houses, which nestled on the
side of the fortress-like mountain wherever a flat surface permitted
their erection. The miners carry down the ore in baskets by very steep
and dangerous paths to the places where the process of amalgamation is
performed.

The value of the silver furnished by the mines in the first thirty
years (from 1771 to 1802) amounted probably to considerably above
thirty-two millions of piastres. Notwithstanding the hardness of the
quartzose rock, the Peruvians, before the arrival of the Spaniards
(as ancient galleries and excavations testify), extracted rich
argentiferous galena on the Cerro de la Lin and on the Chupiquiyacu,
and gold in Curumayo (where native sulphur is also found in the quartz
rock as well as in the Brazilian Itacolumite). We inhabited near the
mines the small mountain town of Micuipampa, which is 11140 (11873
English) feet above the level of the sea, and where, though only 6° 43´
from the equator, water freezes in the house nightly throughout a large
portion of the year. In this desert devoid of vegetation live three
or four thousand persons, who are obliged to have all their means of
subsistence brought from the warm valleys, as they themselves only rear
some kinds of kale and excellent salad. In this wilderness, as in every
town in the high mountains of Peru, ennui leads the richer class of
persons, who are not on that account more cultivated or more civilised,
to pass their time in deep gambling: thus wealth quickly won is still
more quickly dissipated. There is much that reminds one of the soldier
of Pizarro’s troop, who, after the pillage of the temple at Cuzco,
complained that he had lost in one night at play “a great piece of the
sun” (a gold plate). I observed the thermometer at Micuipampa at 8 in
the morning 1°, and at noon 7° Reaumur (34°.2 and 47°.8 Fahrenheit).
We found among the thin blades of Ichhu-grass (perhaps our Stipa
eriostachya), a beautiful Calceolaria (C. sibthorpioides), which we
should not have expected at such an elevation.

Not far from the town of Micuipampa, in a high plain called Llanos or
Pampa de Navar, there have been found throughout an area of above an
English geographical square mile, immediately under the turf, and as
it were intertwined with the roots of the alpine grasses, enormous
masses of rich red silver ore and threads of pure silver (in remolinos,
clavos, and vetas manteadas). Another elevated plain west of the
Purgatorio, near the Quebrada de Chiquera, is called “Choropampa” or
the “Field of Shells” (_churu_, in the Quichua language, signifies
shells, and particularly small eatable kinds, _hostion_, _mexillon_).
The name refers to fossils which belong to the cretaceous group, and
which are found there in such abundance that they early attracted the
attention of the natives. This is the place where there was obtained
near the surface a mass of pure gold spun round with threads of silver
in the richest manner. Such an occurrence shows how independent many
of the ores thrown up from the interior of the earth into fissures
or veins, are of the nature of the adjacent rock and of the relative
age of the formations broken through. The rock of the Cerro de
Gualgayoc and of Fuentestiana has a great deal of water, but in the
Purgatorio absolute dryness prevails. I found to my astonishment
that notwithstanding the height of the strata above the level of the
sea, the temperature of the last named mine was 15°.8 Reaumur (67°.4
Fahr.); while in the neighbouring Mina de Guadalupe the water in the
mine showed about 9° Reaumur (52°.2 Fahr.) As in the open air the
thermometer only rises to about 4° Reaumur (41° Fahr.), the miners,
whose toil is severe, and who are almost without clothing, call the
subterranean heat in the Purgatorio stifling.

The narrow path from Micuipampa to the ancient city of the Incas,
Caxamarca, is difficult even for mules. The name of the town was
originally Cassamarca or Kazamarca, _i. e._ the Frost town; (_marca_,
as signifying a place or locality, belongs to the northern Chinchaysuyo
or Chinchaysuyu dialect, while the word in the general Quichua language
signifies the stories of houses, and also defences or forts). Our
way lay for five or six hours over a succession of Paramos, where we
were exposed almost incessantly to the fury of the wind and to the
sharp-edged hail so peculiar to the ridges of the Andes. The height of
the route above the level of the sea is generally between nine and ten
thousand feet (about 9600 and 10660 Eng.) It afforded me, however, the
opportunity of making a magnetic observation of general interest; _i.
e._ the determination of the point where the North Inclination of the
Needle passes into South Inclination, or where the traveller’s route
crosses the Magnetic Equator.[52]

On reaching at length the last of these mountain wildernesses, the
Paramo de Yanaguanga, the traveller looks down with increased pleasure
on the fertile valley of Caxamarca. It affords a charming prospect:
a small river winds through the elevated plain, which is of an oval
form and about six or seven German geographical square miles in extent
(96 or 112 English geographical square miles). The plain resembles
that of Bogota: both are probably the bottoms of ancient lakes; but at
Caxamarca there is wanting the myth of the wonder-working Botschica
or Idacanzas, the high priest of Iraca, who opened for the waters a
passage through the rock of Tequendama. Caxamarca is situated 600 (640
Eng.) feet higher than Santa Fé de Bogota, therefore almost as high
as the city of Quito; but being sheltered by surrounding mountains it
enjoys a far milder and more agreeable climate. The soil is extremely
fertile, and the plain full of cultivated fields and gardens traversed
by avenues of Willows, large flowered red, white, and yellow varieties
of Datura, Mimosas, and the beautiful Quinuar-trees (our Polylepsis
villosa, a Rosacea allied to Alchemilla and Sanguisorba). Wheat yields
on an average in the Pampa de Caxamarca fifteen to twentyfold, but
the hopes of a plentiful harvest are sometimes disappointed by night
frosts, occasioned by the great radiation of heat towards the unclouded
sky through the dry and rarefied mountain air: the frosts are not felt
in the roofed houses.

In the northern part of the plain, small porphyritic domes break
through the widely extended sandstone strata, and probably once formed
islands in the ancient lake before its waters had flowed off. On the
summit of one of these domes, the Cerro de Santa Polonia, we enjoyed a
pleasing prospect. The ancient residence of Atuhuallpa is surrounded
on this side by fruit gardens and by irrigated fields of lucerne
(Medicago sativa, “campos de alfalfa”). Columns of smoke are seen at
a distance rising from the warm baths of Pultamarca, which are still
called Baños del Inca. I found the temperature of these sulphur-springs
55°.2 Reaumur (156°.2 Fahrenheit). Atahuallpa spent a part of the year
at these baths, where some slight remains of his palace still survive
the devastating rage of the Conquistadores. The large and deep basin or
reservoir in which, according to tradition, one of the golden chairs
in which the Inca was carried had been sunk and has ever since been
sought in vain, appeared to me, from the regularity of its circular
shape, to have been artificially excavated in the sandstone rock above
one of the fissures through which the springs issue.

Of the fort and palace of Atahuallpa there are also only very slight
remains in the town, which is now adorned with some fine churches.
The destruction of the ancient buildings has been accelerated by
the devouring thirst of gold which led men, before the close of the
sixteenth century, in digging for supposed hidden treasures, to
overturn walls and carelessly to undermine or weaken the foundations
of all the houses. The palace of the Inca was situated on a hill of
porphyry which had originally been hollowed at the surface, so that it
surrounds the principal dwelling almost like a wall or rampart. A state
prison and a municipal building (la Casa del Cabildo) have been erected
on a part of the ruins. The most considerable ruins still visible, but
which are only from 13 to 16 feet high, are opposite the convent of
San Francisco; they consist, as may be observed in the house of the
Cacique, of fine cut blocks of stone two or three feet long, and placed
upon each other without cement, as in the Inca-Pilca or strong fortress
of Cañar in the high land of Quito.

There is a shaft sunk in the porphyritic rock which once led into
subterranean chambers, and a gallery said to extend to the other
porphyritic dome before spoken of, that of Santa Polonia. Such
arrangements shew an apprehension of the uncertainties of war, and the
desire to secure the means of escape. The burying of treasures was an
old and very generally prevailing Peruvian custom. There may still
be found subterranean chambers below many of the private dwellings of
Caxamarca.

We were shown steps cut in the rock, and also what is called the Inca’s
foot-bath (el lavatorio de los pies). The washing of the monarch’s feet
was accompanied by some inconvenient usages of court etiquette.[53]
Minor buildings, designed according to tradition for the servants,
are constructed partly like the others of cut stones, and provided
with sloped roofs, and partly with well formed bricks alternating
with siliceous cement (muros y obra de tapia). In the latter class of
constructions there are vaulted recesses, the antiquity of which I long
doubted, but, as I now believe, without sufficient grounds.

In the principal building the room is still shown in which the unhappy
Atahuallpa was kept a prisoner for nine months[54] from November 1532,
and there is pointed out to the traveller the wall on which the captive
signified to what height he would fill the room with gold if set free.
This height is given very variously, by Xerez in his “Conquista del
Peru” which Barcia has preserved for us, by Hernando Pizarro in his
letters, and by other writers of the period. The prince said that
“gold in bars, plates, and vessels, should be heaped up as high as he
could reach with his hand.” Xerez assigns to the room a length of 23,
and a breadth of 18 English feet. Garcilaso de la Vega, who quitted
Peru in his 20th year, in 1560, estimates the value of the treasure
collected from the temples of the sun at Cuzco, Huaylas, Huamachuco,
and Pachacamac, up to the fateful 29th of August 1553, on which day
the Inca was put to death, at 3,838,000 Ducados de Oro[55].

In the chapel of the state prison, to which I have before alluded as
built upon the ruins of the Inca’s palace, the stone still marked
by the indelible stains of blood is shown to the credulous. It is a
very thin slab, 13 feet long, placed in front of the altar, and has
probably been taken from the porphyry or trachyte of the vicinity. One
is not permitted to make any more precise examination by striking off
a part of the stone, but the three or four supposed blood spots appear
to be natural collections of hornblende or pyroxide in the rock. The
Licentiate Fernando Montesinos, who visited Peru scarcely a hundred
years after the taking of Caxamarca, even at that early period gave
currency to the fable that Atahuallpa was beheaded in prison, and that
stains of blood were still visible on the stone on which the execution
had taken place. There is no reason to doubt the fact, confirmed by
many eye-witnesses, that the Inca, in order to avoid being burnt alive,
consented to be baptised under the name of Juan de Atahuallpa by his
fanatic persecutor, the Dominican monk Vicente de Valverde. He was
put to death by strangulation (el garrote) publicly, and in the open
air. Another tradition relates that a chapel was raised over the spot
where Atahuallpa was strangled, and that his body rests beneath the
stone; in such case, however, the supposed spots of blood would remain
unaccounted for. In reality, however, the corpse was never placed
beneath the stone in question. After a mass for the dead, and solemn
funereal rites, at which the brothers Pizarro were present in mourning
habits (!), it was conveyed first to the churchyard of the convent of
San Francisco, and afterwards to Quito, Atahuallpa’s birthplace. This
last transfer was in compliance with the expressed wish of the dying
Inca. His personal enemy, the astute Rumiñavi (“stone-eye,” a name
given from the disfigurement of one eye by a wart; “rumi,” signifying
“stone,” and “ñaui,” “eye,” in the Quichua language), from political
motives caused the body to be buried at Quito with solemn obsequies.

We found descendants of the monarch, the family of the Indian Cacique
Astorpilco, dwelling in Caxamarca, among the melancholy ruins of
ancient departed splendour, and living in great poverty and privation;
but patient and uncomplaining. Their descent from Atahuallpa through
the female line has never been doubted in Caxamarca, but traces of
beard may perhaps indicate some admixture of Spanish blood. Of the sons
of the Great (but for a child of the sun somewhat free thinking),[56]
Huayna Capac, neither of the two who swayed the sceptre before the
arrival of the Spaniards, Huascar and Atahuallpa, left behind them
acknowledged sons. Huascar became the prisoner of Atahuallpa in the
plains of Quipaypan, and was soon afterwards secretly murdered by his
order. Neither were there any surviving male descendants of the two
remaining brothers of Atahuallpa, the insignificant youth Toparca,
who Pizarro caused to be crowned as Inca in the autumn of 1553, and
the enterprising Manco Capac, similarly crowned, but who afterwards
rebelled again. Atahuallpa left indeed a son, whose christian name
was Don Francisco, (but who died very young), and a daughter, Doña
Angelina, by whom Francisco Pizarro (with whom she led a wild and
warlike life), had a son whom he loved fondly, grandchild of the
slaughtered monarch. Besides the family of the Cacique Astorpilco, with
whom I was acquainted at Caxamarca, the Carguraicos and Titu Buscamayta
were pointed out at the period of my visit as belonging to the Inca
dynasty; but the Buscamayta family has since become extinct.

The son of the Cacique Astorpilco, a pleasing and friendly youth of
seventeen, who accompanied me over the ruins of the palace of his
ancestor, while living in extreme poverty, had filled his imagination
with images of buried splendour and golden treasures hidden beneath
the masses of rubbish upon which we trod. He related to me that one
of his more immediate forefathers had bound his wife’s eyes, and
then conducted her through many labyrinths cut in the rock into
the subterranean garden of the Incas. There she saw, skilfully and
elaborately imitated, and formed of the purest gold, artificial trees,
with leaves and fruit, and birds sitting on the branches; and there
too was the much sought for golden travelling chair (una de las andas)
of Atahuallpa. The man commanded his wife not to touch any of these
enchanted riches, because the long foretold period of the restoration
of the empire had not yet arrived, and that whoever should attempt
before that time to appropriate aught of them would die that very
night. These golden dreams and fancies of the youth were founded on
recollections and traditions of former days. These artificial “golden
gardens” (Jardines o Huertas de oro) were often described by actual
eye-witnesses, Cieza de Leon Sarmiento, Garcilaso, and other early
historians of the Conquest. They were found beneath the temple of the
sun at Cuzco, in Caxamarca, and in the pleasant valley of Yucay, a
favourite residence of the monarch’s family. Where the golden Huertas
were not below ground, living plants grew by the side of the artificial
ones: among the latter, tall plants and ears of maize (mazorcas) are
mentioned as particularly well executed.

The morbid confidence with which the young Astorpilco assured me
that below our feet, a little to the right of the spot on which I
stood at the moment, there was an artificial large-flowered Datura
tree (Guanto), formed of gold wire and gold plates, which spread its
branches over the Inca’s chair, impressed me deeply but painfully, for
it seemed as if these illusive and baseless visions were cherished as
consolations in present sufferings. I asked the lad--“Since you and
your parents believe so firmly in the existence of this garden, are not
you sometimes tempted in your necessities to dig in search of treasures
so close at hand?” The boy’s answer was so simple, and expressed
so fully the quiet resignation characteristic of the aboriginal
inhabitants of the country, that I noted it in Spanish in my journal.
“Such a desire (tal antojo) does not come to us; father says it would
be sinful (que fuese pecado). If we had the golden branches with all
their golden fruits our white neighbours would hate and injure us. We
have a small field and good wheat (buen trigo).” Few of my readers,
I think, will blame me for recalling here the words of the young
Astorpilco and his golden visions.

The belief, so widely current among the natives, that to take
possession of buried treasures which belonged to the Incas would be
wrong, and would incur punishment and bring misfortune on the entire
race, is connected with another belief which prevailed, especially
in the 16th and 17th centuries, _i. e._ the future restoration of a
kingdom of the Incas. Every suppressed nationality looks forward to a
day of change, and to a renewal of the old government. The flight of
Manco Inca, the brother of Atahuallpa, into the forests of Vilcapampa
on the declivity of the eastern Cordillera, and the sojourn of Sayri
Tupac and Inca Tupac Amaru in those wildernesses, have left permanent
recollections. It was believed that the dethroned dynasty had settled
between the rivers Apurimac and Beni, or still farther to the east in
Guiana. The myth of el Dorado and the golden city of Manoa, travelling
from the west to the east, increased these dreams, and Raleigh’s
imagination was so inflamed by them, that he founded an expedition
on the hope of “conquering ‘the imperial and golden city,’ placing
in it a garrison of three or four thousand English, and levying from
the ‘Emperor of Guiana,’ a descendant of Huayna Capac, and who holds
his court with the same magnificence, an annual tribute of £300,000
sterling, as the price of his promised restoration to the throne in
Cuzco and Caxamarca.” Wherever the Peruvian Quichua language has
extended, some traces of such expectations of the return of the Inca’s
sovereignty continue[57] to exist in the minds of many among those of
the natives who are possessed of some knowledge of the history of their
country.

We remained for five days in the town of the Inca Atahuallpa, which at
that time scarcely reckoned seven or eight thousand inhabitants. Our
departure was delayed by the number of mules which were required for
the conveyance of our collections, and by the necessity of making a
careful choice of the guides who were to conduct us across the chain
of the Andes to the entrance of the long but narrow Peruvian sandy
desert (Desierto de Sechura). The passage over the Cordillera is
from north-east to south-west. Immediately after quitting the plain
of Caxamarca, on ascending a height of scarcely 9600 (10230 English)
feet, the traveller is struck with the sight of two grotesquely
shaped porphyritic summits, Aroma and Cunturcaga (a favourite haunt
of the powerful vulture which we commonly call Condor; _kacca_ in the
Quichua language signifies “the rock.”) These summits consisted of
five, six, or seven-sided columns, 37 to 42 English feet high, and
some of them jointed. The Cerro Aroma is particularly picturesque. By
the distribution of its often converging series of columns placed one
above another, it resembles a two-storied building, which, moreover, is
surmounted by a dome or cupola of non-columnar rock. Such outbursts of
porphyry and trachyte are, as I have before remarked, characteristic of
the high crests of the Cordilleras, to which they impart a physiognomy
quite distinct from that presented by the Swiss Alps, the Pyrenees, and
the Siberian Altai.

From Cunturcaga and Aroma we descended by a zig-zag course a steep
rocky declivity of 6400 English feet into the deep cleft valley of the
Magdalena, the bottom of which is still 4260 English feet above the
level of the sea. A few wretched huts, surrounded by the same wool or
cotton-trees (Bombax discolor) which we had first seen on the banks
of the Amazons, were called an Indian village. The scanty vegetation
of the valley bears some resemblance to that of the province of Jaen
de Bracamoros, but we missed the red groves of Bougainvillæa. This
valley is one of the deepest with which I am acquainted in the chain
of the Andes: it is a true transverse valley directed from east to
west, deeply cleft, and hemmed in on the two sides by the Altos de
Aroma and Guangamarca. In this valley recommences the same quartz
formation which we had observed in the Paramo de Yanaguanga, between
Micuipampa and Caxamarca, at an elevation of 11720 English feet, and
which, on the western declivity of the Cordillera, attains a thickness
of several thousand feet, and was long an enigma to me. Since von Buch
has shown us that the cretaceous group is also widely extended in the
highest chains of the Andes, on either side of the Isthmus of Panama,
the quartz formation which we are now considering, which has perhaps
been altered in its texture by the action of volcanic forces, may be
considered to belong to the Quadersandstein, intermediate between
the upper part of the chalk series, and the Gault and Greensand. On
quitting the mild temperature of the Magdalena valley we had to ascend
again for three hours the mountain wall of 5120 English feet, opposite
to the porphyritic group of the Alto de Aroma. The change of climate
in so doing was the more sensible, as we were often enveloped in the
course of the ascent in a cold fog.

The longing desire which we felt to enjoy once more the open view of
the sea after eighteen months’ constant sojourn in the ever restricted
range of the interior of the mountains, had been heightened by
repeated disappointments. In looking from the summit of the volcano of
Pichincha, over the dense forests of the Provincia de las Esmeraldas,
no sea horizon can be clearly distinguished, by reason of the too great
distance of the coast and height of the station: it is like looking
down from an air-balloon into vacancy. One divines, but one does not
distinguish. Subsequently, when between Loxa and Guancabamba we reached
the Paramo de Guamini, where there are several ruined buildings of the
times of the Incas, and from whence the mule-drivers had confidently
assured us that we should see beyond the plain, beyond the low
districts of Piura and Lambajeque, the sea itself which we so much
desired to behold, a thick mist covered both the plain and the distant
sea shore. We saw only variously shaped masses of rock alternately rise
like islands above the waving sea of mist, and again disappear, as had
been the case in our view from the Peak of Teneriffe. We were exposed
to almost the same disappointment in our subsequent transit over the
pass of Guangamarca, at the time of which I am now speaking. As we
toiled up the mighty mountain side, with our expectations continually
on the stretch, our guides, who were not perfectly acquainted with the
road, repeatedly promised us that at the end of the hour’s march which
was nearly concluded, our hopes would be realised. The stratum of mist
which enveloped us appeared occasionally to be about to disperse, but
at such moments our field of view was again restricted by intervening
heights.

The desire which we feel to behold certain objects does not depend
solely on their grandeur, their beauty, or their importance; it is
interwoven in each individual with many accidental impressions of his
youth, with early predilection for particular occupations, with an
attachment to the remote and distant, and with the love of an active
and varied life. The previous improbability of the fulfilment of a
wish gives besides to its realisation a peculiar kind of charm. The
traveller enjoys by anticipation the first sight of the constellation
of the cross, and of the Magellanic clouds circling round the Southern
Pole,--of the snow of the Chimborazo, and the column of smoke ascending
from the volcano of Quito,--of the first grove of tree-ferns, and
of the Pacific Ocean. The days on which such wishes are realised
form epochs in life, and produce ineffaceable impressions; exciting
feelings of which the vividness seeks not justification by processes
of reasoning. With the longing which I felt for the first view of the
Pacific from the crests of the Andes, there mingled the interest with
which I had listened as a boy to the narrative of the adventurous
expedition of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa,[58] the fortunate man who
(followed by Francisco Pizarro) first among Europeans beheld from the
heights of Quarequa, on the Isthmus of Panama, the eastern part of
the Pacific Ocean,--the “South Sea.” The reedy shores of the Caspian,
at the place where I first saw them, _i. e._ from the Delta formed by
the mouths of the Volga, cannot certainly be called picturesque; yet
I viewed them with a gratification heightened almost into delight by
the particular interest and pleasure with which, in early childhood, I
had looked at the shape of this Asiatic inland sea on maps. That which
is thus excited in us[59] by childish impressions, or by accidental
circumstances in life, takes at a later period a graver direction, and
often becomes a motive for scientific labours and distant enterprises.

When after many undulations of the ground, on the summit of the steep
mountain ridge, we finally reached the highest point, the Alto de
Guangamarca, the heavens which had long been veiled became suddenly
clear: a sharp west wind dispersed the mist, and the deep blue of the
sky in the thin mountain air appeared between narrow lines of the
highest cirrous clouds. The whole of the western declivity of the
Cordillera by Chorillos and Cascas, covered with large blocks of quartz
13 to 15 English feet long, and the plains of Chala and Molinos as far
as the sea shore near Truxillo, lay beneath our eyes in astonishing
apparent proximity. We now saw for the first time the Pacific Ocean
itself; and we saw it clearly: forming along the line of the shore a
large mass from which the light shone reflected, and rising in its
immensity to the well-defined, no longer merely conjectured horizon.
The joy it inspired, and which was vividly shared by my companions
Bonpland and Carlos Montufar, made us forget to open the barometer
until we had quitted the Alto de Guangamarca. From our measurement
taken soon after, but somewhat lower down, at an isolated cattle-farm
called the Hato de Guangamarca, the point from which we first saw the
sea would be only somewhere between 9380 and 9600 English feet above
the level of the sea.

The view of the Pacific was peculiarly impressive to one who like
myself owed a part of the formation of his mind and character, and many
of the directions which his wishes had assumed, to intercourse with
one of the companions of Cook. My schemes of travel were early made
known, in their leading outlines at least, to George Forster, when I
enjoyed the advantage of making my first visit to England under his
guidance, more than half a century ago. Forster’s charming descriptions
of Otaheite had awakened throughout Northern Europe a general interest
(mixed, I might almost say, with romantic longings) for the Islands of
the Pacific which had at that time been seen by very few Europeans.
I too cherished at the time of which I am speaking the hope of soon
landing on them; for the object of my visit to Lima was twofold,--to
observe the transit of Mercury over the solar disk, and to fulfil an
engagement made with Captain Baudin before I left Paris, to join him
in a voyage of circumnavigation which was to take place as soon as the
Government of the French Republic could furnish the requisite funds.

Whilst we were in the Antilles, North American newspapers announced
that the two Corvettes, Le Géographe and Le Naturaliste, would sail
round Cape Horn and touch at Callao de Lima. On receiving this
intelligence at Havana, where I then was, after having completed my
Orinoco journey, I relinquished my original plan of going through
Mexico to the Philippines, and hastened to engage a vessel to convey
me from the Island of Cuba to Cartagena de Indias. Baudin’s Expedition,
however, took quite a different route from that which was announced
and expected; instead of sailing round Cape Horn, as had been designed
when it had been intended that Bonpland and myself should form part
of it, it sailed round the Cape of Good Hope. One of the two objects
of my Peruvian journey and of our last passage over the Chain of the
Andes failed; but on the other hand I had, at the critical moment, the
rare good fortune of a perfectly clear day, during a very unfavourable
season of the year, on the misty coast of Low Peru. I observed the
passage of Mercury over the Sun at Callao, an observation which has
become of some importance towards the exact determination of the
longitude of Lima[60], and of all the south-western part of the New
Continent. Thus in the intricate relations and graver circumstances of
life, there may often be found, associated with disappointment, a germ
of compensation.




ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS.


[41] p. 267.--“_On the ridge of the Chain of the Andes or Antis._”

The Inca Garcilaso, who was well acquainted with the language of his
country and was fond of dwelling on etymologies, always calls the Chain
of the Andes las Montañas de los Antis. He says positively, that the
great Mountain chain east of Cuzco derived its name from the tribe
of the Antis, and the Province of Anti which is to the east of the
Capital of the Incas. The Quaternary division of the Peruvian Empire
according to the four quarters of the Heavens, reckoned from Cuzco,
borrowed its terminology not from the very circumstantial words taken
which signify East, West, North, and South in the Quichua language
(intip lluscinanpata, intip yaucunanpata, intip chaututa chayananpata,
intip chaupunchau chayananpata); but from the names of the Provinces
and of the tribes or races, (Provincias llamadas Anti, Cunti, Chincha
y Colla), which are east, west, north, and south of the Centre of the
Empire (the city of Cuzco). The four parts of the Inca-theocracy are
called accordingly Antisuyu, Cuntisuyu, Chinchasuyu, and Collasuyu.
The word _suyu_ signifies “strip,” and also “part.” Notwithstanding
the great distance, Quito belonged to Chinchasuyu; and in proportion
as by their religious wars the Incas extended still more widely the
prevalence of their faith, their language, and their absolute form of
government, these Suyus also acquired larger and unequally increased
dimensions. Thus the names of provinces came to be used to express the
different quarters of the heavens; “Nombrar aquellos Partidos era lo
mismo,” says Garcilaso, “que decir al Oriente, ó al Poniente.” The Snow
Chain of the Antis was thus looked upon as an East chain. “La Provincia
Anti da nombre á las Montañas de los Antis. Llamaron la parte á del
Oriente Antisuyu, por la qual tambien llaman Anti á toda aquella gran
Cordillera de Sierra Nevada que pasa al Oriente del Peru, por dar á
entender, que está al Oriente.” (Commentarios Reales, P. I. p. 47 and
122.) Later writers have tried to deduce the name of the Chain of the
Andes from “anta,” which signifies “copper” in the Quichua language.
This metal was indeed of the greatest importance to a nation whose
tools and cutting instruments were made not of iron but of copper mixed
with tin; but the name of the “Copper Mountains” can hardly have been
extended to so great a chain; and besides, as Professor Buschmann very
justly remarks, the word anta retains its terminal _a_ when making
part of a compound word: _anta_, cobre, y _antamarca_ Provincia de
Cobre. Moreover, the form and composition of words in the ancient
Peruvian language are so simple that there can be no question of the
passage of an _a_ into an _i_; and thus “anta” (copper) and “Anti or
Ante” (meaning as dictionaries of the country explain “la tierra de
los Andes, el Indio hombre de los Andes, la Sierra de los Andes,” _i.
e._ the country of the Andes, an inhabitant of the Andes, or the chain
of mountains themselves), are and must continue two wholly different
and distinct words. There are no means of interpreting the proper
name (Anti) by connecting it with any signification or idea; if such
connection exist it is buried in the obscurity of the past. Other
Composites of Anti besides the above-mentioned Antisuyu are “Anteruna”
(the native inhabitant of the Andes), and Anteunccuy or Antionccoy,
(sickness of the Andes, mal de los Andes pestifero).

[42] p. 268.--“_The Countess of Chinchon._”

She was the wife of the Viceroy Don Geronimo Fernandez de Cabrera,
Bobadilla y Mendoza, Conde de Chinchon, who administered the government
of Peru from 1629 to 1639. The cure of the Vice-Queen falls in the
year 1638. A tradition which has obtained currency in Spain, but which
I have heard much combated at Loxa, names a Corregidor del Cabildo de
Loxa, Juan Lopez de Cañizares, as the person by whom the Quina-bark
was first brought to Lima and generally recommended as a remedy. I
have heard it asserted in Loxa that the beneficial virtues of the
tree were known long before in the mountains, though not generally.
Immediately after my return to Europe I expressed the doubts I felt as
to the discovery having been made by the natives of the country round
Loxa, since even at the present day the Indians of the neighbouring
valleys, where intermittent fevers are very prevalent, shun the use
of bark. (Compare my memoir entitled “über die China-wälder” in the
“Magazin der Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde” zu Berlin, Jahrg.
I. 1807, S. 59.) The story of the natives having learnt the virtues of
the Cinchona from the lions who “cure themselves of intermittent fevers
by gnawing the bark of the China (or Quina) trees,”--(Hist. de l’Acad.
des Sciences, année 1738, Paris, 1740, p. 233),--appears to be entirely
of European origin, and nothing but a monkish fable. Nothing is known
in the New Continent of the “Lion’s fever,” for the large so-called
American Lion (Felis concolor), and the small mountain Lion (Puma)
whose foot-marks I have seen on the snow, are never tamed and made
the subjects of observation; nor are the different species of Felinæ
in either continent accustomed to gnaw the bark of trees. The name of
Countess’s Powder (Pulvis Comitissæ), occasioned by the remedy having
been distributed by the Countess of Chinchon, was afterwards changed
to that of Cardinal’s or Jesuit’s powder, because Cardinal de Lugo,
Procurator-General of the order of the Jesuits, spread the knowledge of
this valuable remedy during a journey through France, and recommended
it to Cardinal Mazarin the more urgently, as the brethren of the
order were beginning to prosecute a lucrative trade in South American
Quina-bark which they obtained through their missionaries. It is
hardly necessary to remark, that in the long controversy which ensued
respecting the good or bad effects of the fever bark, the protestant
physicians sometimes permitted themselves to be influenced by religious
intolerance and dislike of the Jesuits.

[43] p. 271.--“_Aposentos de Mulalos._”

Respecting these aposentos (dwellings, inns, in the Quichua language
_tampu_, whence the Spanish form tambo), compare Cieça, Chronica del
Peru, cap. 41, (ed. de 1554, p. 108) and my Vues des Cordillères, Pl.
xxiv.

[44] p. 272.--“_The fortress of the Cañar._”

Is situated not far from Turche, at an elevation of 9984 (10640
English) feet. I have given a drawing of it in the Vues des
Cordillères, Pl. xvii. (compare also Cieça, cap. 44, P. i. p. 120).
Not far from the Fortaleza del Cañar, in the celebrated ravine of the
Sun, Inti-Guaycu, (in the Quichua or Qquechhua language, _huaycco_),
is the rock on which the natives think they see a representation of
the sun and of an enigmatical sort of bank or bench which is called
Inga-Chungana (Incachuncana), the Inca’s play. I have drawn both. See
Vues des Cordillères, Pl. xviii. and xix.

[45] p. 272.--“_Artificial roads covered with cemented gravel._”

Compare Velasco, Historia de Quito, 1844, T. i. p. 126-128, and
Prescott, Hist. of the Conquest of Peru, Vol. i. p. 157.

[46] p. 273.--“_Where the road was interrupted by flights of steps._”

Compare Pedro Sancho in Ramusio, Vol. iii. fol. 404, and Extracts
from Manuscript Letters of Hernando Pizarro, employed by the great
historical writer now living at Boston; Prescott, Vol. i. p. 444. “El
camino de las sierras es cosa de ver, porque en verdad en tierra tan
fragosa en la cristiandad no se han visto tan hermosos caminos, toda la
mayor parte de calzada.”

[47] p. 275.--“_Greeks and Romans shew these contrasts._”

“If,” says Strabo, (Lib. v. p. 235, Casaub) “the Greeks in building
their cities sought for a happy result by aiming especially at beauty
and solidity, the Romans on the other hand have regarded particularly,
objects which the Greeks left unthought of;--stone pavements in the
streets; aqueducts bringing to the city abundant supplies of water; and
provisions for drainage so as to wash away and carry to the Tiber all
uncleanliness. They also paved the roads through the country, so that
waggons may transport with ease the goods brought by trading ships.”

[48] p. 276.--“_The messenger of the deity Nemterequeteba._”

The civilisation of ancient Mexico (the Aztec land of Anahuac), and
that of the Peruvian theocracy or empire of the Incas, the children
of the Sun, have so engrossed attention in Europe, that a third point
of comparative light and of dawning civilisation, which existed among
the nations inhabiting the mountains of New Granada, was long almost
entirely overlooked. I have touched on this subject in some detail in
the Vue des Cordillères et Monumens des Peuples Indigènes de l’Amérique
(ed. in 8vo.) T. ii. p. 220-267. The form of the government of the
Muyscas of New Granada reminds us of the constitution of Japan and the
relation of the Secular Ruler (Kubo or Seogun at Jeddo) to the sacred
personage the Daïri at Miyako. When Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada advanced
to the high table land of Bogota (Bacata, _i. e._ the extremity of
the cultivated fields, probably from the proximity of the mountain
wall), he found there three powers or authorities respecting whose
reciprocal relations and subordination there remains some uncertainty.
The spiritual chief, who was appointed by election, was the high priest
of Iraca or Sogamoso (Sugamuxi, the place of the disappearance of
Nemterequeteba): the secular rulers or princes were the Zake (Zaque of
Hunsa or Tunja), and the Zipa of Funza. In the feudal constitution the
last-named prince appears to have been originally subordinate to the
Zake.

The Muyscas had a regular mode of computing time, with intercalation
for amending the lunar year: they used small circular plates of gold,
cast of equal diameter, as money (any traces of which among the highly
civilised ancient Egyptians have been sought in vain), and they had
temples of the Sun with stone columns, remains of which have very
recently been discovered in the Valley of Leiva. (Joaquin Acosta,
Compendio historico del Descubrimiento de la Nueva Granada, 1848,
p. 188, 196, 206, and 208; Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de
Paris, 1847, p. 114.) The tribe or race of the Muyscas ought properly
speaking to be always denoted by the name of Chibchas; as Muysca in
the Chibcha language signifies merely “men,” “people.” The origin
and elements of the civilisation introduced are attributed to two
mystical forms, Bochica (Botschica) and Nemterequeteba which are often
confounded together. The first of these is still more mythical than the
second; for it was only Botschica who was regarded as divine, and made
almost equal to the Sun itself. His fair companion Chia or Huythaca
occasioned by her magical arts the overflowing of the valley of Bogota,
and for so doing was banished by Botschica from the earth, and made
to revolve round it for the first time, as the moon. Botschica struck
the rock of Tequendama, and gave a passage for the waters to flow off
near the field of the Giants (Campo de Gigantes) in which the bones
of elephant-like mastodons lie buried at an elevation of 8250 (8792
Engl.) feet above the level of the sea. Captain Cochrane (Journal of
a Residence in Colombia, 1825, Vol. ii. p. 390) and Mr. John Ranking
(Historical Researches on the Conquest of Peru, 1827, p. 397), state
that animals of this species are still living in the Andes, and shed
their teeth! Nemterequeteba, also called Chinzapogua (enviado de Dios)
is a human person, a bearded man, who came from the East, from Pasca,
and disappeared at Sogamoso. The foundation of the sanctuary of Iraca
is sometimes ascribed to him and sometimes to Botschica, and as the
latter is said to have borne also the name of Nemqueteba, the confusion
between the two, on ground so unhistoric, is easily accounted for.

My old friend Colonel Acosta, in his instructive work entitled
Compendio de la Hist. de la Nueva Granada, p. 185, endeavours to prove
by means of the Chibcha language that “potatoes (Solanum tuberosum)
bear at Usmè the native non-Peruvian name of Yomi, and were found by
Quesada already cultivated in the province of Velez as early as 1537,
a period when their introduction from Chili, Peru, and Quito, would
seem improbable, and therefore that the plant may be regarded as a
native of New Granada.” I would remark, however, that the Peruvian
invasion and complete possession of Quito took place before 1525, the
year of the death of the Inca Huayna Capac. The southern provinces
of Quito even fell under the dominion of Tupac Inca Yupanqui at the
conclusion of the 15th century (Prescott, Conquest of Peru, Vol. i.
p. 332.) In the unfortunately still very obscure history of the first
introduction of the potato into Europe, the merit of its introduction
is still very generally attributed to Sir John Hawkins, who is supposed
to have received it from Santa Fé in 1563 or 1565. It appears more
certain that Sir Walter Raleigh planted the first potatoes on his
Irish estate near Youghal, from whence they were taken to Lancashire.
Before the conquista, the plantain (Musa), which since the arrival
of the Spaniards has been cultivated in all the warmer parts of New
Granada, was only found, as Colonel Acosta believes, (p. 205) at Choco.
On the name Cundinamarca,--applied by a false erudition to the young
republic of New Granada in 1811, a name “full of golden dreams” (sueños
dorados), more properly Cundirumarca (not Cunturmarca, Garcilaso, lib.
viii. cap. 2),--see also Joaquin Acosta, p. 189. Luis Daza, who joined
the small invading army of the Conquistador Sebastian de Belalcazar
which came from the south, had heard of a distant country abounding
in gold, called Cundirumarca, inhabited by the tribe of the Chicas,
and whose prince had solicited Atahuallpa at Caxamarca for auxiliary
troops. These Chicas have been confounded with the Chibchas or Muyscas
of New Granada; and thus the name of the unknown more southern country
has been unduly transferred to that territory.

[49] p. 278.--“_The fall of the Rio de Chamaya._”

Compare my Recueil d’Observ. Astron., vol. i. p. 304; Nivellement
barométrique, No. 236-242. I have given in the Vues des Cordillères, Pl
xxxi. a drawing of the “swimming post,” as he binds round his head the
handkerchief containing the letters.

[50] p. 280.--“_Which, on account of an old observation of La
Condamine, was of some importance to the geography of South America._”

I desired to connect chronometrically Tomependa, the point at which La
Condamine began his voyage, and other places geographically determined
by him on the Amazons river, with the town of Quito. La Condamine
had been in June 1743, (59 years before me) at Tomependa, which
place I found, by star observations taken for three nights, to be in
south lat. 5° 81´ 24´´, and west longitude from Paris 80° 56´ 37´´
(from Greenwich 78° 84´ 55´´). Previous to my return to France the
longitude of Quito was in error to the full amount of 50-1/2 minutes
of arc, as Oltmanns has shown by my observations, and by a laborious
recalculation of all those previously made. (Humboldt, Recueil
d’Observations Astron., vol. ii. p. 309-359). Jupiter’s satellites,
lunar distances, and occultations, give a satisfactory accordance, and
all the elements of the calculation are placed before the public. The
too easterly longitude of Quito was transferred by La Condamine to
Cuenca and the Amazons river. “Je fis,” says La Condamine, “mon premier
essai de navigation sur un radeau (balsa) en descendant la rivière de
Chinchipe jusqu’à Tomependa. Il fallut me contenter d’en déterminer
la latitude et de conclure la longitude par les routes. J’y fis mon
testament politique en rédigeant l’extrait de mes observations le plus
importantes.” (Journal du Voyage fait à l’Equateur, 1751, p. 186.)

[51] p. 282.--“_At upwards of twelve thousand feet above the sea we
found fossil marine shells._”

See my Essai géognostique sur le Gisement des Roches, 1823, p. 236;
and for the first zoological determination of the fossils contained
in the cretaceous group in the chain of the Andes, see Léop. de Buch,
Pétrifications recueillies en Amérique, par Alex. de. Humboldt et
Charles Degenhardt, 1839 (in fol.), pp. 2-3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 18-22.
Pentland found fossil shells of the Silurian formation in Bolivia, on
the Nevado de Antakäua, at the height of 16400 French (17480 English)
feet, (Mary Somerville, Physical Geography, 1849, Vol. i. p. 185).

[52] p. 287.--“_Where the chain of the Andes is intersected by the
magnetic equator._”

Compare my Rélation hist. du Voyage aux Régions équinoxiales, T. iii.
p. 622; and Kosmos, Bd. i. S. 191 and 432; where, however, by errors
of the press, the longitude is once 48° 40´, and afterwards 80° 40´,
instead of, as it should be, 80° 54´ from Paris (or 78° 32´ from
Greenwich), (English edit. p. 173, and note 159).

[53] p. 290.--“_Accompanied by inconvenient ceremonies of Court
etiquette._”

In conformity with a highly ancient Court ceremonial, Atahuallpa spat
not on the ground, but into the hand of one of the principal ladies
present; “all,” says Garcilaso, “on account of his majesty.” El Inca
nunca escupia en el suelo, sino en la mano de una Señora mui principal,
por Majestad, (Garcilaso, Comment. Reales, P. ii. p. 46).

[54] p. 290.--“_Captivity of Atahuallpa._”

A short time before the captive Inca was put to death, he was taken
into the open air, in compliance with his request, to see a large
comet. The “greenish black comet, nearly as thick as a man,” (Garcilaso
says, P. ii. p. 44, una cometa verdinegra, poco menos gruesa que el
cuerpo de un hombre), seen by Atahuallpa before his death, therefore
in July or August 1533, and which he supposed to be the same malignant
comet which had appeared at the death of his father, Huayna Capac, is
certainly the one observed by Appian (Pingré, Cométographie, T. i. p.
496; and Galle’s “Notice of all the Paths of Comets hitherto computed,”
in “Olber’s Leichtester Methode die Bahn eines Cometen zu berechnen,”
1847, S. 206), and which, on the 21st of July, standing high in the
north, near the constellation of Perseus, represented the sword which
Perseus holds in his right hand. (Mädler, Astronomie, 1846, S. 307;
Schnurrer, Die Chronik der Seuchen in Verbindung mit gleichzeitigen
Erscheinungen, 1825, Th. ii. S. 82.) Robertson considers the year of
Huayna Capac’s death uncertain; but, from the researches of Balboa and
Velasco, that event appears to have occurred towards the close of 1525:
thus the statements of Hevelius (Cometographia, p. 844), and of Pingré
(T. i. p. 485), derive confirmation from the testimony of Garcilaso
(P. i. p. 321) and the tradition preserved among the “amautas, que son
los filosofos de aquella Republica.” I may here introduce the remark,
that Oviedo alone, and certainly erroneously, asserts, in the inedited
continuation of his Historia de las Indias, that the proper name of the
Inca was not Atahuallpa, but Atabaliva (Prescott, Conquest of Peru,
Vol. i. p. 498.)

[55] p. 291.--“_Ducados de Oro._”

The sum mentioned in the text is that which is stated by Garcilaso
de la Vega in the Commentarios reales de los Incas, Parte ii. 1722,
pp. 27 and 51. The statements of Padre Blas Valera and of Gomara,
Historia de las Indias, 1553, p. 67, differ, however, considerably.
Compare my Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne (éd. 2), T. iii.
p. 424. It is, moreover, no less difficult to determine the value of
the Ducado, Castellano, or Peso de Oro. (Essai pol. T. iii. pp. 371
and 377; Joaquin Acosta, Descubrimiento de la Nueva Granada, 1848, p.
14.) The modern excellent historical writer, Prescott, has been able
to avail himself of a manuscript bearing the very promising title,
“Acta de Reparticion del Rescate de Atahuallpa.” The estimate of the
whole Peruvian booty which the brothers Pizarro and Almagro divided
amongst themselves at the (I believe) too large value of three and a
half millions of pounds sterling, includes doubtless the gold of the
ransom and that taken from the different temples of the Sun and from
the enchanted gardens, (Huertas de Oro). (Prescott, Conquest of Peru,
Vol. i. pp. 464-477.)

[56] p. 292.--“_The great, but, for a Son of the Sun, somewhat
free-thinking Huayna Capac._”

The nightly absence of the Sun excited in the Inca many philosophical
doubts as to the government of the world by that luminary. Padre Blas
Valera noted down the remarks of the Inca on the subject of the Sun:
“Many maintain that the Sun lives, and is the Maker and Doer of all
things (el hacedor de todas las cosas); but whoever would complete
any thing must remain by what he is doing. Now many things take place
when the Sun is absent; therefore he is not the original cause of all
things. It seems also doubtful whether he is living; for though always
circling round, he is never weary (no se cansa). If he was living,
he would become weary, as we do; and if he was free, he would surely
move sometimes into parts of the heavens where we never see him. The
Sun is like an animal fastened by a cord so as always to move in the
same round, (como una Res atada que siempre hace un mismo cerco);
or as an arrow which only goes where it is sent, and not where it
chooses itself.” (Garcilaso, Comment. Reales, P. i. lib. viii. cap. 8,
p. 276.) The view taken of the circling round of a heavenly body, as
if it was fastened to a cord, is very striking. As Huayna Capac died
at Quito in 1525, seven years before the arrival of the Spaniards, he
no doubt used, instead of “res atada,” the general expression of an
“animal” fastened to a cord; but indeed, even in Spanish, “res” is by
no means limited to oxen, but may be applied to any tame cattle. We
cannot examine here how far the Padre may have mingled parts of his own
sermons with the heresies of the Inca, with the view of weaning the
natives from the official and dynastic worship of the Sun, the religion
of the Court. We see in the very conservative State policy, and in
the maxims of State and proceedings of the Inca Roca, the conqueror
of the province of Charcas, the solicitude which was felt to guard
strictly the lower classes of the people from such doubts. This Inca
founded schools for the upper classes only, and forbade, under heavy
penalties, to teach the common people any thing, “lest they should
become presumptuous, and should create disturbances in the State!” (No
es lecito que enseñen á los hijos de los Plebeios las Ciencias, porque
la gente baja no se eleve y ensobervezca y menoscabe la Republica;
Garcilaso, P. i. p. 276.) Thus the policy of the Inca’s theocracy was
almost the same as that of the Slave States in the United Free States
of North America.

[57] p. 295.--“_The restoration of an empire of the Incas._”

I have treated this subject more fully in another place (Relation
hist. T. iii. p. 703-705 and 713). Raleigh thought there was in Peru
an old prophecy “that from Inglaterra those Ingas should be againe in
time to come restored and deliuered from the seruitude of the said
conquerors. I am resolued that if there were but a smal army afoote in
Guiana marching towards Manoa, the chiefe citie of Inga, he would yield
Her Majestie by composition so many hundred thousand pounds yearely, as
should both defend all enemies abroad and defray all expences at home,
and that he woulde besides pay a garrison of 3000 or 4000 soldiers very
royally to defend him against other nations. The Inca wil be brought
to tribute with great gladnes.” (Raleigh, “The Discovery of the large,
rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, performed in 1595,” according to
the edition published by Sir Robert Schomburgk, 1848, p. 119 and 137.)
This scheme of a Restoration promised much that might be very agreeable
to both sides, but unfortunately the dynasty who were to be restored,
and who were to pay the money, were wanting!

[58] p. 299.--“_Of the expedition of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa._”

I have already remarked elsewhere (Examen critique de l’histoire de
la Géographie du Nouveau Continent, et des progrès de l’Astronomie
nautique aux 15ème et 16ème siècles, T. i. p. 349) that Columbus
knew fully ten years before Balboa’s expedition the existence of
the South Sea and its great proximity to the east coast of Veragua.
He was conducted to this knowledge not by theoretical speculations
respecting the configuration of Eastern Asia, but by the local and
positive reports of the natives, which he collected on his fourth
voyage (May 11, 1502, to November 7, 1504). On this fourth voyage the
Admiral went from the coast of Honduras to the Puerto de Mosquitos, the
western end of the Isthmus of Panama. The reports of the natives, and
the comments of Columbus on those reports in the “Carta rarissima” of
the 7th of July, 1503, were to the effect that “not far from the Rio
de Belen the other sea (the South Sea) turns (boxa) to the mouths of
the Ganges, so that the countries of the Aurea (_i. e._ the countries
of the Chersonesus aurea of Ptolemy) are situated in relation to the
eastern coasts of Veragus, as Tortosa (at the mouth of the Ebro) is to
Fuentarrabia (on the Bidassoa) in Biscay, or as Venice in relation to
Pisa.” Although Balboa first saw the South Sea from the heights of the
Sierra de Quarequa on the 25th of September (Petr. Martyr, Epist. dxl.
p. 296), yet it was not until several days later that Alonso Martin de
Don Benito, who found a way from the mountains of Quarequa to the Gulf
of San Miguel, embarked on the South Sea in a canoe. (Joaquin Acosta,
Compendio hist. del Descubrimiento de la Nueva Granada, p. 49.)

As the taking possession of a considerable part of the west coast
of the New Continent by the United States of North America, and the
report of the abundance of gold in New California (now called Upper
California) have rendered more urgent than ever the formation of a
communication between the Atlantic States and the regions of the West
through the Isthmus of Panama, I feel it my duty to call attention
once again to the circumstance that the shortest way to the shores of
the Pacific, which was shown by the natives to Alonso Martin de Don
Benito, is in the eastern part of the Isthmus, and led to the Golfo de
San Miguel. We know that Columbus (Vida del Almirante por Don Fernando
Colon, cap. 90) sought for an “estrecho de Tierra firmë”; and in the
official documents which we possess of the years 1505 and 1507, and
especially 1514, mention is made of the desired “opening” (abertura),
and of the pass (passo), which should lead directly to the “Indian
Land of Spices.” Having for more than forty years been occupied with
the subject of the means of communication between the two seas, I have
constantly, both in my printed works and in the different memoirs which
with honourable confidence the Free States of Spanish America have
requested me to furnish, urged that the Isthmus should be examined
hypsometrically throughout its entire length, and more especially
where, in Darien and the inhospitable former Provincia de Biruquete,
it joins the continent of South America; and where, between the Atrato
and the Bay of Cupica (on the shore of the Pacific), the mountain
chain of the Isthmus almost entirely disappears. (See in my Atlas
géographique et physique de la Nouvelle Espagne, Pl. iv.; in the Atlas
de la Relation historique, Pl. xxii. and xxiii.; Voyage aux Régions
équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, T. iii. p. 117-154; and Essai
politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, T. i. 2de édit. 1825,
p. 202-248.)

General Bolivar at my request caused an exact levelling of the Isthmus
between Panama and the mouth of the Rio Chagres to be made in 1828 and
1829 by Lloyd and Falmarc. (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London for the year 1830, p. 59-68.) Other measurements have
since been executed by accomplished and experienced French engineers,
and projects have been formed for canals and railways with locks and
tunnels, but always in the direction of a meridian between Portobello
and Panama,--or more to the west, towards Chagres and Cruces. Thus
the _most important_ points of the _eastern_ and _south-eastern_ part
of the Isthmus have remained unexamined on both shores! So long as
this part is not examined geographically by means of exact but easily
obtained determinations of latitude and of longitude by chronometers,
as well as hypsometrically in the conformation of the surface by
barometric measurements of elevation,--so long I consider that the
statement I have repeatedly made, and which I now repeat in 1849, will
still be true; viz. “that it is as yet unproved and _quite premature_
to pronounce that the Isthmus does not admit of the formation of an
Oceanic Canal (_i. e._ a canal with fewer locks than the Caledonian
Canal) permitting at all seasons the passage of the same sea-going
ships between New York and Liverpool on the one hand, and Chili and
California on the other.”

On the Atlantic side (according to examinations which the Direccion
of the Deposito hidrografico of Madrid have entered on their maps
since 1809) the Ensenada de Mandinga penetrates so deeply towards the
south that it appears to be only four or five German geographical
miles, fifteen to an equatorial degree, (_i. e._ 16 or 20 English
geographical miles), from the coast of the Pacific on the _east_ of
Panama. On the Pacific side the isthmus is almost equally indented by
the deep Golfo de San Miguel, into which the Rio Tuyra falls, with
its tributary river the Chuchunque (Chuchunaque). This last-named
stream in the upper part of its course approaches within 16 English
geographical miles of the Atlantic side of the isthmus to the west of
Cape Tiburon. For more than twenty years I have had inquiries made
from me on the subject of the problem of the Isthmus of Panama, by
associations desirous of employing considerable pecuniary means: but
the simple advice which I have given has never been followed. Every
scientifically educated engineer knows that between the tropics, (even
without corresponding observations), good barometric measurements (the
horary variations being taken into account) afford results which are
well assured to less than from 70 to 90 French or 75 to 96 English
feet. It would besides be easy to establish for a few months on the
two shores two fixed corresponding barometric stations, and to compare
repeatedly the portable instruments employed in preliminary levelling,
with each other and with those at the fixed stations. Let that part
be particularly examined where, near the continent of South America,
the separating mountain ridge sinks into hills. Seeing the importance
of the subject to the great commerce of the world, the research ought
not, as hitherto, to be restricted to a limited field. A great and
comprehensive work, which shall include the whole eastern part of the
Isthmus,--and which will be equally useful for every possible kind of
operation or construction,--for canal, or for railway,--can alone
decide the much discussed problem either affirmatively or negatively.
That will be done at last, which should, and, had my advice been taken,
would have been done in the first instance.

[59] p. 300.--“_That which is awakened in us by childish impressions or
by the circumstances of life._”

On the incitements to the study of nature, compare Kosmos, Bd. ii. S.
5, (English edit. vol. ii. p. 5).

[60] p. 302.--“_Of importance for the exact determination of the
longitude of Lima._”

At the period of my Expedition, the Longitude of Lima was given in
the maps published in the Deposito hidrografico de Madrid, from the
observations of Malaspina, which made it 5h. 16m. 53s. from Paris. The
transit of Mercury over the Sun’s disk on the 9th of November, 1802,
which I observed at Callao, the Port of Lima, (in the northern Torreon
del Fuerte de San Felipe) gave for Callao by the mean of the contact of
both limbs 5h. 18m. 16s. 5, and by the exterior contact only 5h. 18m.
18s. (79° 34´ 30´´). This result (obtained from the Transit of Mercury)
is confirmed by those of Lartigue, Duperrey, and Captain FitzRoy in
the Expedition of the Adventure and Beagle. Lartigue found Callao 5h.
17m. 58s., Duperrey 5h. 18m. 16s., and FitzRoy 5h. 18m. 15s. (all West
of Paris). As I determined the difference of longitude between Callao
and the Convent de San Juan de Dios at Lima by carrying chronometers
between them four times, the observation of the transit of Mercury
gives the longitude of Lima 5h. 17m. 51s. (79° 27´ 45´´ W. from Paris,
or 77° 06´ 03´´ W. from Greenwich). Compare my Recueil d’observations
astron. Vol. ii. p. 397, 419 and 428, with my Relat. hist. T. iii. p.
592.

 Potsdam, June 1849.




GENERAL SUMMARY

OF THE

CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.


  _Physiognomy of Plants_--p. 1 to p. 31.

  Universal profuse distribution of organic life on the declivities of
  the highest mountains, on the ocean, and in the atmosphere.
  Subterranean Flora. Siliceous-shelled Polygastrica in masses of polar
  ice. Podurellæ in tubular holes in the glaciers of the Alps; the
  glacier flea (Desoria glacialis). Small organic creatures in the
  dust which falls like rain in the neighbourhood of the African
  Desert       3-8

  History of the vegetable covering of the surface of the globe. Gradual
  extension of vegetation over the bare rocky crust. Lichens,
  mosses, and succulent plants. Causes of the present absence of
  vegetation in particular districts       8-13

  Each zone has its peculiar character. All animal and vegetable forms
  attached to fixed and always recurring types. Physiognomy of
  Nature. Analysis of the general impression produced by the aspect
  of a country or district. The several elements which make up this
  impression; outlines of the mountains, azure of the sky, and form
  of the clouds: but principally determined by the vegetable covering.
  Animal organisation far less influential on the landscape from
  deficiency of mass. The power of locomotion of individuals, and
  frequently their small size, also contribute to lessen their general
  effect on the landscape      13-16

  Enumeration of the forms of plants which principally determine the
  physiognomy of Nature, and which decrease or increase from the
  equator to the poles according to laws which have been made the
  subject of investigation      17-20


  Palms      20, 21, 126-140

  Plantains or Bananas      21, 22, 140, 141

  Malvaceæ      22, 141-143

  Mimosæ      22, 23, 143-145

  Ericeæ, or Heath form      23, 24, 145-147

  Cactus form      24, 147-151

  Orchideæ      24, 25, 151, 152

  Casuarineæ      25, 152, 153

  Needle trees      25, 153-175

  Pothos and Aroideæ      26, 175-178

  Lianes, or twining rope plants      26, 178-180

  Aloë form      27, 180-183

  Gramineæ      27, 28, 183-187

  Ferns      28, 188-193

  Liliaceæ      28, 193

  Willow form      28, 193-196

  Myrtaceæ      28, 196-200

  Melastomaceæ      28, 200

  Laurel form      28, 200


  Enjoyment derived from the sight of the natural grouping and contrasts
  of these forms of plants. Importance of the physiognomic
  study of plants to the landscape painter      29-31, 200-203


  _Scientific Elucidations and Additions_--p. 33 to p. 210.

  Organic forms, animal and vegetable, in the highest mountain regions
  adjacent to the limit of perpetual snow in the Andes and the Alps;
  insects carried up involuntarily by ascending currents of air. The
  Hypudæus nivalis of the Swiss Alps. On the true elevation above
  the sea reached by the Chinchilla laniger in Chili      33-35

  Lecidias and Parmelias on rocks not entirely covered with snow;
  some phænogamous plants also wander in the Cordilleras beyond
  the limits of perpetual snow, as the Saxifraga boussingaulti, to
  15770 English feet above the level of the sea. Groups of phænogamous
  plants extend in the Andes to 13700 and 14920 English
  feet above the sea; species of Culcitium, Espeletia, and Ranunculus;
  small umbelliferous plants resembling mosses in appearance;
  Myrrhis andicola and Fragosa arctioides      35, 36

  Measurement of the height of Chimborazo, and etymology of the
  name      36-39

  On the greatest absolute heights which have yet been reached by any
  human beings in either continent; in the Cordilleras and the
  Himalaya, on the Chimborazo and the Tarhigang      40

  Habits and haunts of the Condor (Cuntur in the Inca language), and
  singular mode of capturing these powerful birds in an enclosure
  fenced by palisades      40-44

  Useful services rendered by the Gallinazos (Cathartes urubu and C.
  aura) in purifying the air in the neighbourhood of human habitations;
  these birds sometimes tamed      44, 45

  On what has been called the revivification of Rotiferæ; views of
  Ehrenberg and Doyère. According to Payen, germs of Cryptogamia
  preserve their power of germination even after being exposed
  to the highest temperatures      45-47

  Diminution, if not entire suspension, of organic functions in the
  winter sleep of animals belonging to the higher classes      47, 48

  Summer sleep of animals in the tropical zone; great dryness acts
  like winter cold. Tenrecs, crocodiles, tortoises, and the Lepidosiren
  of Eastern Africa      48-51

  Anther dust or pollen; fertilization of flowers. The Cœlebogyne
  found to produce perfect seeds in England without any traces of
  pollen being discovered      51-53

  The luminosity of the ocean produced by living luminous animals and
  by decaying fibres and membranes of animals. Acalephæ and
  siliceous-shelled luminous Infusoria. Influence on the luminosity
  of a stimulus applied to the nerves      53-60

  Pentastomes inhabiting the pulmonary cells of the rattle-snake of
  Cumana      60, 61

  Rock-building corals. The scaffolding or solid material which survives
  the death of the coral animals. More correct views of recent times.
  Shore reefs, encircling reefs, and lagoon islands. Atolls, or coral
  walls enclosing a lagoon. The coral islands to the south of Cuba, the
  Jardines del Rey of Columbus. The living gelatinous investment
  of the calcareous scaffolding of the coral trunks attracts fish and
  turtles in search of food. Singular mode of fishing by the aid of
  the Remora (the Echeneis naucrates)      62-72

  Probable greatest depth of coral structures      72-75

  Besides much carbonate of lime and magnesia, Madrepores and
  Astræas also contain some fluoric and phosphoric acids      75, 76

  Oscillatory state of the bottom of the sea according to Darwin  76-79

  Traditions of Samothrace. Irruptions of the sea. Mediterranean.
  Sluice theory of Strato. Myth of Lyktonia, and the “Atlantis
  broken into fragments”      78-83

  On the causes which prevent the sinking down of clouds and
  precipitation taking place from them      83-84

  Heat disengaged from the crust of the earth while solidifying. Hot
  currents of air which in the early ages of the earth, from frequent
  corrugations of the strata and elevations of land, may have been
  diffused in the atmosphere from temporary fissures      84, 85

  Colossal size and great age of some kinds of trees; Dragon tree
  of Orotava thirteen, and Adansonia digitata (Baobab) thirty-two
  English feet in diameter. Characters cut in the bark of the trees in
  the 15th century. Adanson assigns to some of the Baobab trunks
  in Senegambia an age of between 5100 and 6000 years      86-92

  Judging by the annular rings, there are yew-trees (Taxus baccata)
  from 2600 to 3000 years old. Is it true that in the northern
  temperate zone the part of the tree turned towards the north has
  narrower annular rings, as Michel Montaigne affirmed in 1581?
  Species of trees in which individuals attain a size of above twenty-
  one or twenty-two English feet diameter, and an age of several
  centuries, belong to the most different natural families      92-94

  Diameter of the Mexican Schubertia disticha of Santa Maria del Tule
  40-1/2 English feet; the sacred Banyan fig-tree of Ceylon almost 30;
  and the oak at Saintes (Dep. de la Charente Inférieure) 29-1/2 English
  feet. The age of the oak tree estimated from its annular rings at
  from 1800 to 2000 years. The root of the rose tree growing
  against the crypt of the Cathedral of Hildesheim is 800 years old.
  A kind of sea-weed, Macrocystis pyrifera, attains a length of 630
  English feet, exceeding therefore the height of the loftiest Coniferæ,
  even that of the Sequoia gigantea      94-97

  Examination of the probable number of phænogamous plants hitherto
  described or preserved in herbariums. Relative numbers. Laws
  discovered in the geographical distribution of plants. Relative
  numbers of the great divisions of Cryptogamia to Cotyledonous
  plants, and of Monocotyledonous to Dicotyledonous plants, in the
  torrid, temperate, and frigid zones. Elements of arithmetical botany.
  Number of individuals; predominance of social plants. The forms
  of organic beings are mutually dependent on and limit each other.
  If we know exactly the number of species of one of the great
  families of Glumaceæ, Leguminosæ, or Compositæ, at any one
  part of the globe, we may infer approximatively both the number
  of species in the remaining families, and the entire number of
  phænogamous plants in the same district. Application of the
  numerical ratios to the direction of the isothermal lines. Mysterious
  original distribution of types. Absence of Roses in
  the southern, and of Calceolarias in the northern hemisphere.
  Why has our heather (Calluna vulgaris), and why have our oaks
  never advanced eastward beyond the Ural Mountains into Asia?
  The vegetation cycle of each species requires for its successful
  organic development a certain minimum amount of temperature.    97-113

  Analogy between the numerical laws of the distribution of animal and
  of vegetable forms. If there are now cultivated in Europe above
  35000 species of phænogamous plants, and if our herbariums probably
  contain, described and undescribed, from 160000 to 212000
  species of phænogamous plants, it is probable that the number of
  collected insects and collected phænogamous plants are nearly
  equal; whilst we know that certain well-explored districts in
  Europe have more than three times as many insects as phænogamous
  plants      113-119

  Considerations on the probable proportion which the number of known
  phænogamous plants bears to the entire number existing on the
  surface of the globe      119-125

  The different forms of plants successively noticed. Physiognomy of
  plants treated in a threefold manner; viz. as to the absolute
  diversity of forms, their local predominance in comparison with the
  entire number of species in different phænogamous Floras, and
  their geographical climatic distribution      126-200

  Greatest extension in height or of the longitudinal axis in
  arborescent vegetation: examples of 235 to 245 English feet in Pinus
  lambertiana and P. douglasii; of 266 English feet in P. strobus; of
  298 and 300 English feet in Sequoia gigantea and Pinus trigona. All
  these examples are from the north-west part of the New Continent.
  Araucaria excelsa of Norfolk Island only attains, according to
  well-assured measurements, 203 to 223 English feet; and the
  Mountain Palm of the Cordilleras, Ceroxylon andicola, 192 English
  feet      165-168

  These gigantic vegetable forms contrasted with the stem of two
  inches high of a willow-tree stunted by cold of latitude or of
  mountain elevation; and still more remarkably with a phænogamous
  plant, Tristicha hypnoides, which, when fully developed in the plains
  of a tropical country, is only a quarter of an English inch in
  height      169

  Bursting forth of blossoms from the rough bark of the Crescentia
  cujete, the Gustavia augusta, and the roots of the Cacao tree.
  The largest flowers, Rafflesia arnoldi, Aristolochia cordata,
  Magnolia, Helianthus annuus, Victoria regina, Euryale amazonica,
  &c.      203, 240

  The different forms of plants determine the character of the landscape
  as dependent on vegetation in different zones. Physiognomic
  classification or division into groups according to external “facies”
  or aspect, entirely different in its principles from the
  classification according to the system of natural families. The study
  of the physiognomy of plants is based principally on what are called
  the vegetative organs, or those on which the preservation of the
  _individual_ depends; systematic botany grounds the arrangement
  of natural families on a consideration of the reproductive organs,
  or those on which the _preservation of the species_ depends    205-210


  _On the Structure and Mode of Action of Volcanos in the different
  Parts of the Earth_--p. 211 to p. 241.

  Influence of journeys in distant countries on the generalisation of
  ideas, and the progress of physical geology. Influence of the
  form of the Mediterranean on the earliest ideas respecting volcanic
  phenomena. Comparative geology of volcanos. Periodical recurrence
  of certain natural changes or revolutions which have their
  origin in the interior of the globe. Relative proportion of the
  height of volcanos to that of their cones of ashes in Pichincha,
  the Peak of Teneriffe, and Vesuvius. Changes in the height of
  the summit of volcanos. Measurements of the height of the
  margins of the crater of Vesuvius from 1773 to 1822: the author’s
  measurements comprise the period from 1805 to 1822      213-228

  Particular description of the eruption in the night of 23-24
  October, 1822. Falling in of a cone of cinders 426 English feet in
  height, which previously stood in the interior of the crater. The
  eruption of ashes from the 24th to the 28th of October is the most
  remarkable of which we possess any certain knowledge since the
  death of the elder Pliny      228-235

  Difference between volcanos with permanent craters; and the
  phenomena (very rarely observed within historic times) in which
  trachytic mountains open suddenly, emit lava and ashes, and
  reclose again perhaps for ever. The latter class of phenomena
  are particularly instructive to the geologist, because they recall the
  earliest revolutions of the oscillating, upheaved, and fissured
  surface of the globe. They led, in classical antiquity, to the view
  of the Pyriphlegethon. Volcanos are intermitting earth springs,
  indicating a communication (permanent or transient) between the
  interior and the exterior of our planet; they are the result of a
  reaction of the still fluid interior against the crust of the earth;
  it is therefore needless to ask what chemical substance burns, or
  supplies materials for combustion, in volcanos      235-238

  The primitive cause of subterranean heat is, as in all planets, the
  process of formation itself, _i. e._ the forming of the aggregating
  mass from a cosmical gaseous fluid. Power and influence of the
  radiation of heat from numerous open fissures and unfilled veins
  in the ancient world. Climate (or atmospheric temperature) at that
  period very independent of the geographical latitude, or of the
  position of the planet in respect to the central body, the sun.
  Organic forms of the present tropical world buried in the icy
  regions of the north 238-241


  _Scientific Elucidations and Additions_--p. 243 to p. 248.

  Barometric measurements of Vesuvius. Comparison of the height
  of different points of the crater of Vesuvius      243-247

  Increase of temperature with depth, 1° Reaumur for every 113
  Parisian feet, or 1° of Fahrenheit for every 53·5 English feet.
  Temperature of the Artesian well at Oeynhausen’s Bad (New
  Salzwerk, near Minden), the greatest depth yet reached below the
  level of the sea. The hot springs near Carthage led Patricius,
  Bishop of Pertusa, in the 3rd century, to form just conjectures
  respecting the cause of the increase of temperature in the interior
  of the earth      248


  _The Vital Force, or the Rhodian Genius_--p. 249 to p. 257.


  _Note to “The Vital Force, or the Rhodian Genius”_--p. 259 to p. 263.

  The Rhodian Genius, the development of a physiological idea in a
  mythical garb. Difference of views respecting the hypothesis of
  peculiar vital forces.      259, 260

  The difficulty of satisfactorily reducing the vital phenomena of
  organisation to physical and chemical laws, is principally founded on
  the complication of the phenomena, and on the multiplicity of
  simultaneously acting forces, as well as the varying conditions of
  the activity of those forces. Definition of the expressions “animate”
  and “inanimate” substances. Criteria derived from the
  composition of the elements after a substance has been separated
  into parts by external agency are the simple enunciation of
  facts.      260-263


  _The Plateau of Caxamarca, the ancient residence of the Inca
  Atahuallpa, and the first view of the Pacific from the crest of
  the Andes_--p. 265 to p. 302.

  Quina-producing forests in the valleys of Loxa. First use of the
  fever-bark in Europe; the Countess of Chinchon, wife of the
  Viceroy      267-269

  Alpine vegetation of the Paramos. Remains of ancient Peruvian
  artificial roads; they rise in the Paramo del Assuay almost to the
  height of the summit of Mont Blanc      269-277

  Singular mode of communication by a “swimming post” messenger 277-279

  Descent to the Amazons river. Vegetation round Chamaya and
  Tomependa; Red Groves of Bougainvillæa. Ridges of rock
  traverse the Amazons. Its breadth at the Pongo de Manseriche
  less than 160 English feet. The falling in of masses of rock at
  Rentema left the bed of the river below the falls dry for some hours,
  to the great alarm of those who lived on the banks      279-281

  Passage across the chain of the Andes at the part where it is
  intersected by the magnetic equator. Ammonites nearly 15 English
  inches long, Echini, and Isocardias of the cretaceous group,
  collected between Guambos and Montan, 12790 English feet above
  the level of the sea. Rich silver mines of Chota. The picturesquely
  towering Cerro de Gualgayoc. Large mass of pure
  native silver in filaments or wire found in the Pampa de Navar.
  A fine piece of pure gold, wound round with similar threads of
  silver, found in the Choropampa (field of shells), so called from the
  numerous fossils. Outbursts of silver and gold ores amongst the
  cretaceous rocks. The small mountain town of Micuipampa is
  11874 English feet above the level of the sea      282-286

  From the mountain wilderness of the Paramo de Yanaguanga the
  traveller descends into the beautiful valley, or rather plateau,
  of Caxamarca (the elevation of which is nearly equal to that of
  the city of Quito). Hot baths of the Incas. Ruins of the
  Palace of Atahuallpa inhabited by his descendants, the family of
  Astorpilco, who live there in the greatest poverty. Strong belief
  of the still remaining subterranean “golden gardens” of the Inca
  beneath the ruins; such certainly existed in the valley of Yucay,
  beneath the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, and at several other points.
  Conversation with the youthful son of the Curaca Astorpilco.
  The room is still shewn in which (1553) the unhappy Atahuallpa
  was imprisoned for nine months, also the wall on which the Inca
  indicated the height to which he would fill the room with gold if
  he should regain his liberty. Manner in which the Inca was
  put to death on the 29th of August, 1533, and remarks on what
  are erroneously called “the indelible stains of blood” on a stone
  slab in front of the altar of the chapel of the state prison  287-295

  Hope of a restoration of the empire of the Incas (which was also
  entertained by Raleigh) has been preserved among the natives.
  Cause of this expectation      295

  Journey from Caxamarca to the sea-coast. Passage over the
  Cordillera by the Altos de Guangamarca. Often disappointed
  hope of enjoying the first view of the Pacific Ocean from the crest
  of the Andes. This hope at last fulfilled at an elevation of 9380
  English feet      296-302


  _Scientific Elucidations and Additions_--p. 303 to p. 324.

  On the origin of the name borne by the chain of the Andes      303-305

  Epoch of the introduction of the Quina-bark in Europe      305, 306

  Remains of the roads of the Incas, and of fortified dwellings;
  Apozentos de Mulalo, Fortalezar del Cañar, Inti-Guaycu      307, 308

  On the ancient civilisation of the Chibchas or Muyscas of New
  Granada      308-310

  Potatoes and Plantains, when first cultivated      311

  Etymology of the word Cundinamarca, which has been corrupted
  from Cundirumarca, and was used in the first years of republican
  independence to denote the whole country of New Granada      311, 312

  Chronometric connection of the town of Quito with Tomependa on
  the upper waters of the Amazons, and with Callao de Lima, the
  position of which was accurately determined by observations of
  the transit of Mercury on the 9th day of November, 1802       312, 313

  Unpleasant etiquette in the Inca’s court. Atahuallpa’s captivity;
  his proposed ransom      314

  Philosophic doubts of Huayna Capac (according to the report of Padre
  Blas Valera) respecting the Deity of the Sun. Objections of the
  Inca-government to the extension of knowledge among the poorer
  and lower classes of the people      316, 317

  Raleigh’s project for restoring the dynasty of the Incas under
  English protection, for which a yearly tribute of several hundred
  thousand pounds was to be paid      317, 318

  Earliest evidence obtained by Columbus of the existence of the
  South Sea or Pacific Ocean. The South Sea first beheld by Vasco
  Nuñez de Balboa (25th Sept. 1513), and first navigated by Alonso
  Martin de Don Benito      318, 319

  On the possibility of the formation of an oceanic canal (with fewer
  locks than the Caledonian Canal) through the Isthmus of Panama.
  Points in which the examination has been neglected      319-323

  Determination of the longitude of Lima      323, 324




INDEX


  Adansonia digitata (monkey-bread tree), one of the largest and oldest
        trees of the globe, ii. 89.

  Allco, the native Peruvian dog, i. 108.

  Aloë, ii. 27, 180.

  Altai, one of the four parallel mountain chains in Central Asia,
        i. 86.

  American races, connection between the inhabitants of Western America
        and Eastern Asia probable, but its nature and period uncertain,
        i. 176.

  Andes, etymological considerations connected with the word Andes or
        Antis, ii. 303.

  Animal life, its universal diffusion, ii. 1.

  Asia, Central, general review of its mountain systems, i. 85.

  Atlas.--The position of the ancient Atlas discussed, i. 144.

  Atahuallpa, site of his ancient palace, ii. 289;
    his prison, 290;
    death, 291;
    descendants, 292;
    notice of the comet which appeared in the year on which the Inca
        was put to death, 313.


  Banks, slightly elevated portions of the Llanos, called “Banks” by
        the natives, i. 2, 33.

  Boa, swims in the South American rivers, and carries its head above
        water like a dog, i. 190.

  Bogota, the seat of an ancient civilisation of the Muyscas or
        Chibchas, ii. 309.


  Cactus, ii. 24, 147.

  Camel, i. 68;
    Ritter’s memoir on the diffusion of the camel, present existence
        in a wild state, i. 70;
    fossil in the Sewalik hills, i. 71.

  Casas grandes, ruins of an Aztec palace, i. 168.

  Casuarineæ, ii. 25, 152.

  Caxamarca, the ancient capital of the Incas, ii. 267, 287.

  Cereals.--Original country of the principal Cereals discussed, i. 169.

  Chibchas, ii. 309.

  Chimborazo, conjectures as to the origin of the name, ii. 37.

  Chota, silver mines of, ii. 282.

  Cinchona, fever-bark, or quina, ii. 267, 305.

  Climate of the eastern or flat portions of South America widely
        different from that of Africa in the same latitudes, causes
        of the difference, i. 8, 123;
    the southern hemisphere cooler and moister than the northern, 139.

  Climatic effects of extensive forests, i. 126.

  Cœlebogyne, produces perfect seeds without any trace of pollen having
        been discovered, ii. 51.

  Condor.--Discussion of the height in the atmosphere to which the
        condor ascends, ii. 40.

  Coniferæ, or needle trees, ii. 25, 175.

  Coral reefs, classified by Darwin, ii. 64;
    his hypothesis of the origin and growth of coral reefs, 76.

  Correo que nada, the “swimming post” in the upper waters of the
        Amazons river, ii. 277.

  Curare, plant from which the poison is obtained, i. 203.

  Current.--Great revolving current of the Atlantic Ocean discussed,
        i. 159.


  Dogs.--European dogs have become wild in South America, and live in
        troops in the Pampas, i. 107;
    native Peruvian dogs, 108;
    Tschudi’s remarks on the indigenous races of dogs in America, 111.

  Dragon-tree of Orotava, ii. 16, 85.


  Esquimaux, instances recorded of their having been carried across the
        Atlantic to the shores of Europe, i. 162.


  Ferns, ii. 28, 188.

  Figured rocks, _i. e._ figures engraven on rocks in an extensive
        district of South America, i. 196.

  Fresh-water springs in the ocean near Cuba, i. 233.

  Fournel, recent contributions to the physical geography of Northern
        Africa, i. 115.

  Frémont, Captain, importance of his geographical memoirs on our
        knowledge of the geography of North America, i. 37, and
        generally in Note[5], also i. 280.


  Geographical distribution of plants, laws of the, ii. 102.

  Gobi, the plateau of, i. 74, 79.

  Gramineæ, ii. 27, 183.

  Guaranis, a tribe inhabiting the sea-coast and rivers near the mouth
        of the Orinoco, i. 178.

  Granite, leaden-coloured rocks of, in the Orinoco, i. 188.

  Great basin, the elevated plain so called, between the Rocky Mountains
        and the Sierra Nevada of California, i. 44;
    forms an inland closed river basin, 280.

  Gymnotus, description of its capture in South America by means of
        horses, i. 22.


  Heat in plants developed during inflorescence, ii. 175.

  Heaths, ii. 23, 145.

  Himalaya, one of the four parallel mountain chains of Central Asia,
        i. 92.

  Hiongnu, i. 101.

  Hooker, Dr. J., recent determination of the elevation of the
        Kinchinjinga, one of the highest peaks of the
        Himalaya, i. 93;
    on the production of perfect seeds by the Cœlebogyne, ii. 51;
    remarks on the geographical distribution of plants in Antarctic
        floras, ii. 122.


  Illimani and Sorata, their height above the sea recently corrected,
        i. 57, 96, 277.


  Kashmeer, valley of, i. 80.

  Kinchinjinga, one of the highest peaks of the Himalaya, its elevation
        recently determined, i. 92.

  Kuen-lün, one of the four parallel mountain chains in Central Asia,
        i. 72, 90.


  Lama, alpaca, and guanaco, three originally distinct species of
        animals, described, i. 166.

  Laurels as a characteristic form of vegetation, ii. 28, 200.

  Lianes, ii. 26, 178.

  Liliaceæ, ii. 28, 193.

  Llanos, their description, i. 7;
    climate strongly contrasted with that of the African plains, 8;
    animals which inhabit them, 15;
    their prevalent vegetation, 120.

  Luminosity of the ocean, ii. 53.


  Malvaceæ, ii. 22.

  Marañon, or Amazons, upper valley of, ii. 281.

  Mauritia palm, i. 16, 181.

  Melastomaceæ, ii. 28, 200.

  Mimoseæ, ii. 22, 145.

  Mississipi, river, its source correctly ascertained, i. 52.

  Moon, mountains of the, their existence, extent, distance from the
        Equator, and general direction, discussed, i. 149.

  Mountain chains in Asia, in the direction of parallels of latitude,
        i. 85;
    those coinciding nearly with meridians, i. 94.

  Muyscas, ancient civilisation of the, ii. 308.

  Myrtaceæ, ii. 28, 196.


  North America, general aspect of its natural features, and
        considerations on its physical geography, i. 39.


  Orchideæ, ii. 24, 151.

  Orinoco, i. 207;
    magnitude of the river compared with that of the rivers Plate and
        Amazons, 211;
    its sources yet unvisited, 213;
    general description of its course, 214;
    “black waters” of the Upper Orinoco, 215;
    cataracts of Atures and Maypures, 217;
    discussion of questions concerning its sources, 239;
    supposed origin in a lake, 243.

  Otomacs, a tribe on the Orinoco who use earth as food, i. 190.


  Pacific, the author’s gratification at first seeing the Pacific from
        the Alto de Guangamarca, ii. 300.

  Palms, ii. 20, 128.

  Panama.--Communication by canal or railroad across the Isthmus of
        Panama discussed, ii. 319.

  Paramo, a mountainous region in South America so called, i. 105;
    its climate and vegetation, i. 105, ii. 269.

  Pastoral life almost unknown to the original inhabitants of America,
        i. 13.

  Plants, physiognomy of, essentially distinct from a botanical
        arrangement, ii. 14, 17, 208;
    is the principal element in the characteristic aspect of different
        portions of the earth’s surface, 16;
    about sixteen different forms of plants enumerated, which are
        chiefly concerned in determining the aspect of Nature, 18;
    Palms, 20;
    Plantains or Bananas, 21;
    Malvaceæ and Bombaceæ, 22;
    Mimosas, 22;
    Heaths, 28;
    Cactuses, 24;
    Orchideæ, 24;
    Casuarineæ, 25;
    Coniferæ, 25;
    Pothos, 26;
    Lianes, 26;
    Aloes, 27;
    Grasses, 27;
    Ferns, 28;
    Liliaceæ, 28;
    Willows, 28;
    Myrtaceæ, Melastomaceæ, and Laurineæ, 29;
    number of species contained in herbariums, 97;
    points of view in which the laws of the geographical distribution of
        plants may be regarded, 102;
    conjectures as to the whole number of species on the globe, 119;
    more than half the number of species are probably yet unknown, 121;
    heat developed during inflorescence, 175;
    general remarks on a physiognomic classification, 205.

  Pothos, ii. 26, 175.


  Quina (or fever bark), ii. 267.


  Roads, old Peruvian, of the times of the Incas, ii. 270.

  Rotiferæ, their revivification, ii. 45.


  Sahara (African desert) composed of several detached basins, i. 114.

  Sand-spouts a phenomenon characteristic of the Peruvian Sand Desert,
        i. 183.

  Sargasso, Mar de; its geographical position discussed, i. 63;
    is the most remarkable assemblage of plants of a single species yet
        known on the globe, i. 64.

  Schomburgk.--Travels of the brothers Robert and Richard Schomburgk
        important in many respects in regard to the physical geography
        of Guiana and the bordering countries, i. 178, 197, 236, 250.

  Sleep, summer and winter, of animals, i. 18, 185; ii. 48.

  Snow, limit of perpetual; inequality of this limit on the northern
        and southern declivities of the Himalaya, i. 98.

  Sorata and Illimani; their heights above the sea recently corrected,
        i. 57, 96, 277.

  Steppes and Deserts, Characteristics of the European, i. 2;
    African, i. 3;
    Asiatic, i. 4;
    South American, i. 7;
    analogies and contrasts between the steppes and the ocean, i. 2, 35.

  Strato, his sluice theory, ii. 78.

  Sugar-cane; of Tahiti, of the West Indies, and of Guiana, i. 31.


  Tacarigua, Lake of, i. 1;
    its scenery and vegetation, i. 27.

  Temperature.--Contrast between the temperature of the east coast of
        America and the west coast of Europe in the same latitudes,
        i. 129;
    general remarks on the temperature of the United States of America,
        i. 131.

  Thian-schan, one of the four parallel mountain chains in Central Asia,
        i. 72, 82.

  Thibet, occupying the valley between the great chains of the Kuen-lün
        and Himalaya, divided into Upper, Middle, and Little Thibet; its
        mean elevation and description, i. 81.

  Tibbos, i. 67.

  Timpanogos, Laguna de, i. 44;
    is the Great Salt Lake of Frémont, 280.

  Traditions of Samothrace, ii. 78.

  Trees, age of, ii. 86;
    trees of highest growth, ii. 165.

  Trisetum subspicatum, an inhabitant both of the Arctic and Antarctic
        Circles, ii. 186.

  Tuaricks, i. 67.


  Urwald, or primeval forest, a name too lightly used, i. 261;
    true character of a primeval forest, 262;
    description of the nocturnal life of wild animals in the Urwald,
        266.


  Vegetation, its propagation and extension over newly formed lands,
        ii. 8;
    the absence of trees erroneously supposed to characterise hot
        countries, 10;
    extensive arid tracts in countries otherwise of luxuriant vegetation
        a geological problem which has not been sufficiently considered,
        12;
    characteristic aspect of vegetation in the tropics, 30;
    characteristic vegetation of the Alps and Andes at great elevations,
        35.

  Vesuvius, measurements of height at different periods, ii. 225, 243;
    particulars of the eruption of 1822, 228.

  Vital force, the, or Rhodian Genius, ii. 251.

  Volcanos of the Thian-schan chain situated in the interior of Asia far
        distant from the sea, i. 88;
    structure and mode of action of, ii. 213;
    instances of extensive volcanic connection, 221;
    importance of repeating exact measurements of the heights of
        craters, 224.


  Willows, ii. 28, 193.


THE END.


Wilson and Ogilvy, Printers, 57, Skinner Street, Snowhill, London.




Transcriber's Note


Duplicate chapter headings have been removed.


The following apparent errors have been corrected:

p. i "BY." changed to "BY"

p. 13 "heat, But," changed to "heat. But,"

p. 52 "as follows:--Un" changed to "as follows:--”Un"

p. 60 "of a line,) S. xix." changed to "of a line,)” S. xix."

p. 64 "of the Carolinas;--and" changed to "of the Carolinas);--and"

p. 81 "“A more richly varied" changed to "A more richly varied"

p. 93 "have been counted.”" changed to "have been counted."

p. 100 "entitled “De distributione" changed to "entitled De
distributione"

p. 113 "acccording to" changed to "according to"

p. 126 "Muskel-und Nervenfaser" changed to "Muskel- und Nervenfaser"

p. 127 "Chæmerops and Cocos" changed to "Chamærops and Cocos"

p. 133 "systematically 12. “How interesting" changed to "systematically
12. How interesting"

p. 134 "concentric rings.”" changed to "concentric rings."

p. 134 "Rio Atabapo.”" changed to "Rio Atabapo."

p. 135 "Nature has lavished" changed to "“Nature has lavished"

p. 145 "10.°5 Reanmur" changed to "10.°5 Reaumur"

p. 146 "in the Canaries.”" changed to "in the Canaries."

p. 160 "aus Indien wahrend der" changed to "aus Indien während der"

p. 160 "torulosa (Don)," changed to "torulosa, Don),"

p. 172 "Tännen-stöcke" changed to "Tannenstöcke"

p. 184 "Asiat Res." changed to "Asiat. Res."

p. 210 "organic devolopment" changed to "organic development"

p. 239 "study of fosssils" changed to "study of fossils"

p. 307 "fortress of the Cañar" changed to "fortress of the Cañar."

p.311 "native of New Granada" changed to "native of New Granada."

p. 313 "164000 French" changed to "16400 French"

p. 315 "p. 424)." changed to "p. 424."

p. 323 "p. 300" changed to "p. 300."

p. 323 "79° 34" changed to "79° 34´"

p. 341 "Alöe" changed to "Aloë"

p. 344 "Maranon" changed to "Marañon"


Inconsistent or archaic spelling and punctuation have otherwise been
kept as printed.