Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Cinnamon Of The Orinoco, And That
Of The Andaquies Missions, Are, However, Less Aromatic Than The
Cinnamon Of Ceylon, And Would Still Be So Even If Dried And Prepared
By Similar Processes.
Every hemisphere produces plants of a different species; and it is not
by the diversity of climates that we
Can attempt to explain why
equinoctial Africa has no laurels, and the New World no heaths; why
calceolariae are found wild only in the southern hemisphere; why the
birds of the East Indies glow with colours less splendid than those of
the hot parts of America; finally, why the tiger is peculiar to Asia,
and the ornithorynchus to Australia. In the vegetable as well as in
the animal kingdom, the causes of the distribution of the species are
among the mysteries which natural philosophy cannot solve. The
attempts made to explain the distribution of various species on the
globe by the sole influence of climate, take their date from a period
when physical geography was still in its infancy; when, recurring
incessantly to pretended contrasts between the two worlds, it was
imagined that the whole of Africa and of America resembled the deserts
of Egypt and the marshes of Cayenne. At present, when men judge of the
state of things not from one type arbitrarily chosen, but from
positive knowledge, it is ascertained that the two continents, in
their immense extent, contain countries that are altogether analogous.
There are regions of America as barren and burning as the interior of
Africa.
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