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Show ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 341 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 organization 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 phrenogamous plant belonging to the fine climate of the southern tropic of the Brazilian province of Goyaz. The moss-like Tristicha hypno1des, from the monocotyledonous family of the Podostemere, hardly reaches the height of 3 lines ( {J11ths, 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'apergus sur une pierre une plante dont la tige n'avoit pas plus de trois !ignes de haut et que je pris d'abord pour une mousse. C'etoit cependant une plante phanerogame, .le Tristicha hypnoi'des, pourvue d'organes sexuels comme nos chenes et les arbres gigantesques qui a l'entour elevaient leur cimes majestueuses." (Auguste de St.-Hilaire, Morphologic Vegetable, 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 color, from a fresh green or silvery gray to a blackishbrown, all give to Coniferre 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 W allich, 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 29* |