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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This Observation Is
Interesting To Vegetable Physiology.
In hot countries, the plants
are so vigorous, that cold is less injurious to them, provided it
be of short duration.
I have seen the banana cultivated in the
island of Cuba, in places where the thermometer descends to seven
centesimal degrees, and sometimes very near freezing point. In
Italy and Spain the orange and date-trees do not perish, though the
cold during the night may be two degrees below freezing point. In
general it is remarked by cultivators, that the trees which grow in
a fertile soil are less delicate, and consequently less affected by
great changes in the temperature, than those which grow in land
that affords but little nutriment.* (* The mulberries, cultivated
in the thin and sandy soils of countries bordering on the Baltic
Sea, are examples of this feebleness of organization. The late
frosts do more injury to them, than to the mulberries of Piedmont.
In Italy a cold of 5 degrees below freezing point does not destroy
robust orange trees. According to M. Galesio, these trees, less
tender than the lemon and bergamot orange trees, freeze only at ten
centesimal degrees below freezing point.)
In order to pass from the town of Laguna to the port of Orotava and
the western coast of Teneriffe, we cross at first a hilly region
covered with black and argillaceous earth, in which are found some
small crystals of pyroxene. The waters most probably detach these
crystals from the neighbouring rocks, as at Frascati, near Rome.
Unfortunately, strata of ferruginous earth conceal the soil from
the researches of the geologist.
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