Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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I
Have Often Directed The Attention Of Botanists To This Extraordinary
Phenomenon In The Geography Of Plants.
The pine (Pinus occidentalis)
is not found in the Lesser Antilles; not even in Jamaica (between 17
3/4 and 18 1/2 degrees of latitude).
It is only seen further north, in
the mountains of San Domingo, and in all that part of the island of
Cuba situated between 20 and 23 degrees of latitude. It attains a
height of from sixty to seventy feet; and it is remarkable that the
cahoba* (mahogany (* Swieteinia Mahogani, Linn.)) and the pine
vegetate at the island of Pinos in the same plains. We also find pines
in the south-eastern part of the island of Cuba, on the declivity of
the Copper Mountains where the soil is barren and sandy. The interior
table-land of Mexico is covered with the same species of coniferous
plants; at least the specimens brought by M. Bonpland and myself from
Acaguisotla, Nevado de Toluca and Cofre de Perote do not appear to
differ specifically from the Pinus occidentalis of the West India
Islands described by Schwartz. Now those pines which we see at sea
level in the island of Cuba, in 20 and 22 degrees of latitude, and
which belong only to the southern part of that island, do not descend
on the Mexican continent between the parallels of 17 1/2 and 19 1/2
degrees, below the elevation of 500 toises. I even observed that, on
the road from Perote to Xalapa in the eastern mountains opposite to
the island of Cuba, the limit of the pines is 935 toises; while in the
western mountains, between Chilpanzingo and Acapulco, near
Quasiniquilapa, two degrees further south, it is 580 toises and
perhaps on some points 450.
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