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.
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