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Show 314 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. dant 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 Chamrerops 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 Hyphrene 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 J ubrea 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, pp. 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 imag\ned. We have felt it so much the more from having especially directed our attention to Palms, Grasses, Cyperacere, J uncacere, Cryptogamous Plants, and such other objects as have been least studied hitherto. Most species |
