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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1st,
Examining In Each Hemisphere, And At The Level Of The Coasts, The
Vegetation On The Same Isothermal Line, Especially
Near convex or
concave summits; 2nd, comparing, with respect to the form of
plants, on the same isothermal line north
And south of the equator,
the alpine branch with that traced in the plains; 3rd, comparing
the vegetation on homonymous isothermal lines in the two
hemispheres, either in the low regions, or in the alpine regions.)
This phenomenon is one of the most curious in the history of
organic forms. 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.
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