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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I Say The History; For In Vain Would Reason Forbid
Man To Form Hypotheses On The Origin Of Things; He Still Goes On
Puzzling Himself With Insoluble Problems Relating To The
Distribution Of Beings.
A gramen of Switzerland grows on the granitic rocks of the straits
of Magellan.* (* Phleum alpinum, examined by Mr. Brown.
The
investigations of this great botanist prove that a certain number
of plants are at once common to both hemispheres. Potentilla
anserina, Prunella vulgaris, Scirpus mucronatus, and Panicum
crus-galli, grow in Germany, in Australia, and in Pennsylvania.)
New Holland contains above forty European phanerogamous plants: and
the greater number of those plants, which are found equally in the
temperate zones of both hemispheres, are entirely wanting in the
intermediary or equinoctial region, as well in the plains as on the
mountains. A downy-leaved violet, which terminates in some sort the
zone of the phanerogamous plants at Teneriffe, and which was long
thought peculiar to that island,* is seen three hundred leagues
farther north, near the snowy summit of the Pyrenees. (* The Viola
cheiranthifolia has been found by MM. Kunth and Von Buch among the
alpine plants which Jussieu brought from the Pyrenees.) Gramina and
cyperaceous plants of Germany, Arabia, and Senegal, have been
recognized among those that were gathered by M. Bonpland and myself
on the cold table-lands of Mexico, along the burning shores of the
Orinoco, and in the southern hemisphere on the Andes and Quito.* (*
Cyperus mucronatus, Poa eragrostis, Festuca myurus, Andropogos
avenaceus, Lapago racemosa. (See the Nova Genera et Species
Plantarum volume 1 page 25.)) How can we conceive the migration of
plants through regions now covered by the ocean? How have the germs
of organic life, which resemble each other in their appearance, and
even in their internal structure, unfolded themselves at unequal
distances from the poles and from the surface of the seas, wherever
places so distant present any analogy of temperature?
Notwithstanding the influence exercised on the vital functions of
plants by the pressure of the air, and the greater or less
extinction of light, heat, unequally distributed in different
seasons of the year, must doubtless be considered as the most
powerful stimulus of vegetation.
The number of identical species in the two continents and in the
two hemispheres is far less than the statements of early travellers
would lead us to believe. The lofty mountains of equinoctial
America have certainly plantains, valerians, arenarias,
ranunculuses, medlars, oaks, and pines, which from their
physiognomy we might confound with those of Europe; but they are
all specifically different. When nature does not present the same
species, she loves to repeat the same genera. Neighbouring species
are often placed at enormous distances from each other, in the low
regions of the temperate zone, and on the alpine heights of the
equator. At other times (and the Silla of Caracas affords a
striking example of this phenomenon), they are not the European
genera, which have sent species to people like colonists the
mountains of the torrid zone, but genera of the same tribe,
difficult to be distinguished by their appearance, which take the
place of each other in different latitudes.
The mountains of New Grenada surrounding the table-lands of Bogota
are more than two hundred leagues distant from those of Caracas,
and yet the Silla, the only elevated peak in the chain of low
mountains, presents those singular groupings of befarias with
purple flowers, of andromedas, of gualtherias, of myrtilli, of uvas
camaronas,* (* The names vine-tree, and uvas camaronas, are given
in the Andes to plants of the genus Thibaudia, on account of their
large succulent fruits. Thus the ancient botanists gave the name of
bear's vine, uva ursi, and vine of Mount Ida (Vitis idaea), to an
arbutus and a myrtillus, which belong, like the thibaudia, to the
family of the Ericineae.) of nerteras, and of aralias with hoary
leaves,* (* Nertera depressa, Aralia reticulata, Hedyotis
blaerioides.) which characterize the vegetation of the paramos on
the high Cordilleras of Santa Fe. We found the same Thibaudia
glandulosa at the entrance of the table-land of Bogota, and in the
Pejual of the Silla. The coast-chain of Caracas is unquestionably
connected (by the Torito, the Palomera, Tocuyo, and the paramos of
Rosas, of Bocono, and of Niquitao) with the high Cordilleras of
Merida, Pamplona, and Santa Fe; but from the Silla to Tocuyo, along
a distance of seventy leagues, the mountains of Caracas are so low,
that the shrubs of the family of the ericineous plants, just cited,
do not find the cold climate which is necessary for their
development. Supposing, as is probable, that the thibaudias and the
rhododendron of the Andes, or befaria, exist in the paramo of
Niquitao and in the Sierra de Merida, covered with eternal snow,
these plants would nevertheless want a ridge sufficiently lofty and
long for their migration towards the Silla of Caracas.
The more we study the distribution of organized beings on the
globe, the more we are inclined, if not to abandon the ideas of
migration, at least to consider them as hypotheses not entirely
satisfactory. The chain of the Andes divides the whole of South
America into two unequal longitudinal parts. At the foot of this
chain, on the east and west, we found a great number of plants
specifically the same. The various passages of the Cordilleras
nowhere permit the vegetable productions of the warm regions to
proceed from the coasts of the Pacific to the banks of the Amazon.
When a peak attains a great elevation, either in the middle of very
low mountains and plains, or in the centre of an archipelago heaved
up by volcanic fires, its summit is covered with alpine plants,
many of which are again found, at immense distances, on other
mountains having an analogous climate. Such are the general
phenomena of the distribution of plants.
It is now said that a mountain is high enough to enter into the
limits of the rhododendrons and the befarias, as it has long been
said that such a mountain reached the limit of perpetual snow.
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