Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Such Are The Mocanera, The Plocama, The Bosea, The
Canarina, The Drusa, And The Pittosporum.
A form which may be
called northern, that of the cruciform plant (Among the small
number of cruciform species contained in the Flora of Teneriffe, we
shall here mention Cheiranthus longifolius, l'Herit.; Ch.
fructescens, Vent.; Ch.
Scoparius, Brouss.; Erysimum bicorne,
Aiton; Crambe strigosa, and C. laevigata, Brouss.), is much rarer
in the Canaries than in Spain and in Greece. Still farther to the
south, in the equinoctial regions of both continents, where the
mean temperature of the air rises above twenty-two degrees, the
cruciform plants are scarcely ever to be seen.
A question highly interesting to the history of the progressive
marks of organization on the globe has been very warmly discussed
in our own times, that of ascertaining whether the polymorphous
plants are more common in the volcanic islands. The vegetation of
Teneriffe is unfavourable to the hypothesis that nature in new
countries is but little subject to permanent forms. M. Broussonnet,
who resided so long at the Canaries, asserts that the variable
plants are not more common there than in the south of Europe. May
it not to be presumed, that the polymorphous species, which are so
abundant in the isle of Bourbon, are assignable to the nature of
the soil and climate rather than to the newness of the vegetation?
Before we take leave of the old world to pass into the new, I must
advert to a subject which is of general interest, because it
belongs to the history of man, and to those fatal revolutions which
have swept off whole tribes from the face of the earth.
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