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Show PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 237 character on the total impression produced, or on the aspect of the country. Among the leading forms of vegetation to which I allude, there a.re, indeed, some which coincide with families belonging to the "natural systems" of botanists. Such are the forms of Bananas, Palms, Casuarinere, a.nd Coniferre. 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 theN ew 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 wi11 no doubt be considerably augmented when travellers shall have penetrated farther into the interior of Continents, and discovered new genera of plants. In the southeastern 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 N eckera 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 limetrees, 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 |
