influences the imagination, and gives them a mon- which he proceeds to give very interesting deumental character, equally interesting to the anti- scriptions from observations made during his quarian and the naturalist. The colossal Dragon travels both in the new and old continents, in regions between the 60th degree of north, and the 10th degree of south latitude. These forms, which decrease and increase from the equator to the poles, according to fixed laws, he thus enu tree at Oratava, in Teneriffe, is 79 feet round its Plantains or Bananas. ceæ. trunks which were 32 English feet in diameter Malvaceæ and Bomba- 6000 years to the Adansonia which they measured, It has been found from ancient and trustworthy documents of the 11th century, that the root of the wild rose tree at the crypt of the Cathedral of Hildesheim, is 1000 years old, and its stem 800. After the cathedral had been burnt down, Bishop Hezilo inclosed the roots of this rose tree in a vault which still exists, and he trained the branches of it upon the walls of the crypt built above the vault, and reconsecrated in 1061. The stem, which is now living, is 26+ feet high, and 2 inches thick. The most remarkable example of vegetable development is exhibited in the Fucus gigantea, a submarine plant, which attains a length of from 400 to 430 feet, surpassing the loftiest coniferæ, such as the Sequoia gigantea, and the Taxodium sempervirens. The aspect or physiognomy of Nature is, according to Humboldt, determined by about sixteen or nineteen different forms of vegetation, of Mimosæ. Lianes or Twining Rope Aloe form. Willow form. Ericeæ or Heath form. Liliaceæ. The Palms have been universally regarded as the loftiest, noblest, and most beautiful of all vegetable forms. Their gigantic, slender, ringed, and occasionally prickly stems, sometimes 192 feet high, terminate in an aspiring and shining foliage, either fan-like or pinnated, with leaves frequently curled like some of the grasses. In receding from the equator they diminish in height and beauty. The true climate of palms is under a mean annual temperature of from 78° to 81°. The date variety lives, but does not thrive, in a mean temperature of from 59° to 621°. In some species of the flower, sheath opens suddenly with an audible sound. The Palms are everywhere accompanied by Plantains or Bananas, groves of which form the ornaments of moist localities in the regions of the equator. Their stems are low, succulent, and almost herbaceous, and are surmounted by long and bright green silky leaves, of a texture thin and loose. Noble and beautiful in shape, they adorn the habitation of man, while they form the principal article of his subsistence under the torrid zone. The Malvaceæ and Bombacee have trunks enormously thick; -leaves large, soft, and woolly, and superb flowers often of a purple or crimson color. The Buobab, or monkey bread tree, belongs to this group. It is 32 feet in diameter, but moderately high, and it is probably the largest and most ancient organic monument on our planet. The Mexican hand tree, (cheirostemus platanoides,) with its long curved anthers projecting beyond the fine purple blossom, causing it to resemble a hand or claw, belongs to this group. Throughout the Mexican States, this one highly ancient tree is the only existing individual of this extraordinary race, and is supposed to be a stranger planted about five centuries ago by the kings of Toluca. The Mimosa, including the acacia, desmanthus, gleditschia, porleria, tamarindus, &c., are never found in the temperate zone of the Old World, though they occur in the United States. They frequently exhibit that umbrella-like arrangement of the branches which is seen in the Italian stonepine. The deep blue of the tropic sky seen through their finely divided foliage, has an ex-Pinus Douglassii,* tremely picturesque effect. The irritability of the Pinus Trigona, phrastus and Pliny. The most excitable is the Sequoia Gigantea, New California, Mimosa pudica, and next to it the Dormiens, the somniens, and the somniculosa. The Ericeæ or Heaths appear to be limited to only one side of our planet, covering large tracts from the plains of Germany, France, and Britain, to the extremity of Norway. They adorn Italy, and are luxuriant on the Peak of Teneriffe; but the most varied assemblage of species occurs in the south of Africa. They are entirely wanting in Australia, and of the 300 known species, only one has been discovered across the whole of America, from Pennsylvania and Labrador to Nootka and Alashka. The Cactus form is almost wholly American, and Humboldt observes, that "there is hardly anything in vegetable physiognomy which makes so singular and ineffaceable an impression on a newly arrived person as the sight of an arid plain thickly covered like those of Cremona, New Barcelona, with columnar and candelabra-like elevated cactus stems." The forms of the cactus are sometimes spherical, sometimes pointed, and sometimes they are shaped like tall polygonal columns, resembling the pipes of an organ. In the arid plains of South America, the melon cactus supplies a refreshing juice to the animal tribes, though the plant is half-buried in the sand, and encased with prickles. The columnar cactus carries its stems to the height of 30 or 32 feet, dividing into candelabra-like branches like the African Euphorbias. The cactus wood is incorruptible, and well fitted for oars. The Orchidee are remarkable for their bright green succulent leaves, and for the colors and shape of their flowers, sometimes resembling insects, and sometimes birds. The taste for this superbly flowering group of plants became so general, that the brothers Loddiges had in 1848 cultivated 2360 species, and at the end of 1848, Klotzsch reckoned the number of species to be 3545. The Casuarineæ form, leafless and gloomy, with their string-like branches, embrace trees with branches, like the stalks of an equisetaceous plant. It occurs only in India and in the Pacific. The Needle Trees, or Coniferæ, including pines, thuias, and cypresses, are rare in the tropics, and inhabit chiefly the regions of the north. There are 312 species of conifere now living, and 178 As a contrast to these lofty trees, Humboldt mentions the small willow tree, (Salix arctica,) as being only two inches high. The Tristicha hypnoides in only, or less than & of an inch, and yet provided with sexual organs, like our oaks and most gigantic trees. The needles of some of the pine trees vary from five inches to a foot in length. The roots of the Taxodium distichum, which is sometimes 128 feet in height and 39 in girth, presents the curious phenomenon of woody excrescences, conical and rounded, and sometimes tabular, which project from 3 to 44 feet from the ground, and when they are very numerous they have been likened by travellers to the grave-tablets in a Jewish burying-ground. The stumps of white pines exhibit a very singular degree of vitality in their roots. After they have been cut down, they continue for several years to produce fresh layers of wood, and to increase in thickness, without putting forth new shoots, leaves, or branches. The Pothos forms, or Aroidiæ, belong to the tropics. These plants clothe parasitically the Their trunks of aged and decaying forest trees. stalks are succulent and herbaceous, and support large leaves. The flowers of the aroidiæ are cased in hooded sheaths, and some of them during the development of the flower exhibit a very considerable increase of vital heat, about 40° above that of the atmosphere, the increase being, in some, greater in the male than in the female plant. The vital heat which Dutrochet observed to a small extent in other plants, and even among funguses, disappeared at night. Leaves of great size, suspended on long fleshy leaf-stalks, are found in the Nymphæaceæ and Nelumboneæ. The round leaves of the magnificent water plant, the Victoria Regina, discovered in 1837, by Sir Robert Schomburgh, in the river Berbice, are six feet in diame ter, and are surrounded by turned-up margins from three to five inches high, their inside being light green, and their outside a bright crimson. The flowers, which have an agreeable perfume, are white and rose-colored, and fifteen inches in diameter, with many hundred petals. About 20 or 30 blossoms may be seen at the same time, within a very small space. According to Poppig, the Euryale Amazonica, which he found near Tefe, fossil species found in the coal measures, the had leaves six feet in diameter. The largest bunter sandstone, the Keupfer, and the Jurassic known flowers, however, belong to a parasitical formations. Of the 114 species of the genus plant, the Rafflesia Arnoldi, discovered in 1818, Pinus which are at present known, not one belongs by Dr. Arnold, in Sumatra. It has a stemless to the southern hemisphere. The following are flower, three English feet in diameter, surrounded the heights of some of the plants of this tree : imbricata, Chili, Pinus Lambertiana, 234-260 by large leaf-like scales. "The flower weighs above 14 pounds, and, what is very remarkable, has the smell of beef, like some of the fungi." The largest flowers in the world, says our author, apart from compositæ, (in the Mexican Helianthus chia, Datura, Barringtonia, Gustavia, Carolinea, Lecythis, Nymphæa, Nelumbium, Victoria Regina, Magnolia, Cactus, and the Orchideous and Liliaceous plants. 224-239 * At three feet above the ground a stem of this tree was 571 feet in girth. Annuus,) belong to Rafflesia Arnoldi, Aristolo- entirely wanting in the new continent, where it is The Lianes, or tropical twining rope plant, correspond with the twining hops and grape-vines in the temperate latitudes. In the tropical region of the south these climbers render the forests so impenetrable to man, accessible to and habitable by the monkey tribe, and by the cercoleptes and small tiger-cats, who mount them and descend by them with wonderful agility, and pass by their help from tree to tree. In this manner whole herds of gregarious monkeys often cross streams which would otherwise be impassable. On the Orinoco, the leafless branches of the Bauhinias, often 40 or 50 feet long, hang down perpendicularly from the lofty top of the Swietenia, and they sometimes stretch themselves in oblique directions, like the cordage of a ship. Among the twining plants we may mention the Passifloras, with their beautiful and many colored blossoms, and the aristolochia cordata, which has a crimson-colored flower seventeen inches in diameter. In South America, on the banks of the river Magdalena, there is found a climbing aristolochia, with flowers four feet in circumference, which the young Indians draw over their heads in sport, and wear as hats or helmets. replaced, as it were, by the guadua, about 60 feet high, discovered by Humboldt and Bonpland. The Bambusa flowers so abundantly, that in Mysore and Orissa the seeds are mixed with honey, and eaten like rice. Dr. Joseph Hooker mentions it as a rare property of one of the gramineæ-the trisetum subspicatum-that it is the only Arctic species he knows which is equally an inhabitant of the opposite Polar regions. The form of Ferns, like that of grasses, is "ennobled in the northern parts of the globe." The number of species amounts to 3250. Arborescent ferns, when they reach a height of above forty feet, have something of a palm-like appearance, but their stems are less slender, shorter, and more rough and scaly, than those of palms. Their foliage is more delicate, of a thinner and more translucent texture, and the minutely indented margins of the fronds are finely and sharply cut. Tree ferns belong almost entirely to the tropical zone, but in that zone they seek by preference the more tempered heat of a moderate elevation above the level of the sea, and mountains two or three thousand feet high may be regarded as their principal seat. In South America the arborescent ferns are usually found associated with the tree which has conferred such benefits on mankind by its feverhealing bark. Both indicate by their presence the ii., p. 28. happy regions where reigns a soft perpetual spring. Many of the twining plants have a very peculiar aspect, occasioned by the square shape of their The Liliaceous plants, which have their prinstems, by flattenings not produced by external cipal seat in Africa, are distinguished by their pressure, and by ribband-like wavings. Adrian flag-like leaves, and superb blossoms. They are Jussieu has exhibited, in very beautiful drawings, represented by the genera Amaryllis, Ixia, Gladithe cruciform and Mosaic figures seen in cross sections of the Bignonias and Banisterias, arising from the mutual pressure and penetration of the circumtwining stems. Regarding the form of Gramineæ as an expression of cheerfulness and of airy grace, and tremulous lightness, combined with lofty stature," our author considers the Aloe form as charac olus, and Pancratium. In Africa they are assembled into masses, and determine the aspect and character of the country; whereas, in the new world, the superb alstromeriæ and species of pancratium, Hæmanthus and crinum are dispersed, and are less social than the Irideæ of Europe. The plants of the Willow form, represented generally by the willow itself, and on the elevated terized by an almost mournful repose and immo- plains of Quito, and in so far only as the shape bility." The groves of bamboo, both in the East of the leaves, and the ramifications are concerned, and West Indies, form avenues and walks, shaded by the Schinus molle. There are 150 different Trees belonging to the group of Myrtaceæ, "pro- | vegetation displays its most majestic forms. In the duce partially, either where the leaves are replaced cold north the bark of trees is covered with lichens and overarching. "The smooth polished, and often lightly waving and bending stems of these singular grasses, are frequently taller than our alders and oaks. Their glassy polish is owing to the quantity of silex in their bark, which, by a species of extravasation, as in the gouty secretions of the human frame, form that singular substance called tabasheer, which may be heard rattling within the joints of the bamboo, when the plant has been cut down." We have ourselves frequently opened these joints, and taken out this beautiful opalescent and dichroitic mineral, which is blue by reflected, and yellow by transmitted light. We have been informed, on high authority, that in severe storms, forests of bamboo in India have been set on fire, by the mutual friction or collision of their flinty stems.* The genus Bambusa is * Our author has forgotten, for he is well acquainted with the subject, to notice these singular facts concerning species spread over the northern hemisphere, from the Equator to Lapland. There is a greater similarity in the physiognomy of this tribe in different climates than even in the Conifere. From the catkins of the male flower of some Egyptian species, a medicine called willow water (aqua salicis) is distilled, and much used. On the banks of the Orange river in Africa, the leaves and young shoots of the S. hirsuta and mucronata form the food of the hippopotamus. The Myrtacea, with their elegant forms, and their stiff, shining, small leaves, studded with transparent spots, give a peculiar character to the Mediterranean islands, the continent of New Holland, and the intertropical region of the Andes, partly low, and partly about 10,000 feet high. Tabasheer, and the silicious character of the bamboo. Our readers will find ample details respecting the optical and physical properties of Tabasheer, in a paper, by the author of this article, in the Phil. Trans. for 1819, p. 283. by leaf-stalk leaves, or by the peculiar disposition or direction of the leaves relatively to the unswollen leaf-stalk, a distribution of stripes of light and shade, unknown in our forests of round-leaved trees." This optical effect surprised the earlier botanical travellers, but our distinguished countryman, Mr. Robert Brown, showed that it was owing to the leaf-stalks of the Acacia longifolia, and A. suaveolens, being expanded in a vertical direction and from the circumstance that the light, instead * of falling on horizontal surfaces, falls on, and passes between vertical ones. The other forms to which our author attaches importance, in reference to the physiognomic study of plants, are the Melastomaceæ, comprising "the genera melastoma (Fothergilla and Tococca Aubl.) and Rhexia, (Meriana and osbeckia)," which have been superbly illustrated by Bonpland; and the Laurel form group, embracing "the genera of Laurus and Persea, the ocoteæ, so numerous in South America, and (on account of physiognomic resemblance) Calophyllum, and the superb aspiring Mammea from among the Guttiferæ." This interesting chapter of "The Aspects of Nature" is closed with some of those general views which our author never fails to clothe with the richest drapery of language and sentiment. After suggesting as an enterprise, worthy of a great artist, to study the aspect and character of all these vegetable forms, not only in hot-houses,* and in botanical descriptions, but in their native grandeur in the tropics, and pointing out the value to the landscape painter, of " a work which should present to the eye, first separately, and then in combination and contrast, the leading forms which have here been enumerated," he concludes the subject in the following manner : It is the artist's privilege, having studied these groups, to analyze them, and thus in his hands, the grand and beautiful form of nature which he would portray, resolves itself, (if I may venture on the expression,) like the other works of men, into a few simple elements. It is under the burning rays of a tropical sun that * Would it not be an enterprise worthy of the wealth and liberality of our public-spirited nobility and country gentlemen, to fill their hot-houses and green-houses, not with the rare plants, which all their neighbors have, but with groups of plants from particular zones, or regions of the globe, or belonging to different natural families or classes. Forest trees, and arborescent plants, which have been acclimated in our island, might in like manner be gathered into local groups, and in the private collections a single county, botanists, landscape painters, artists, of gardeners, and amateurs, might study the whole flora of the globe. A subdivision of labor has now become neces and mosses, whilst between the tropics the Cymbidium and fragrant vanilla enliven the trunks of the Anacardias, and of the gigantic fig-trees. The fresh verdure of the Pothos leaves, and of the Dracontias, contrasts with the many colored flowers of the Orchideæ. Climbing Bauhinias, Passifloras, and yellow flowering Banisterias, twine round the trunks of the forest trees. Delicate blossoms spring from the roots of the Theobroma, and form the thick and rough bark of the Crescentias and the Gustavia. * In the tropics vegetation is generally of a fresher verdure, more luxuriant and succulent, and adorned with larger and more shining leaves than in our northern climates. The "social" plants, which often impart so uniform and monotonous a character to European countries, are almost entirely absent in the equatorial regions. Trees almost as lofty as our oaks are adorned with flowers as large and as beautiful as our lilies. * * * The great elevation attained in several tropical countries, not only by single mountains, but even by extensive districts, enables the inhabitants of the torrid zone-surrounded by palms, bananas. and the other beautiful forms proper to these latitudes to behold also those vegetable forms which, demanding a cooler temperature, would seem to belong to other zones. Elevation above the level of the sea gives this cooler temperature, even in the hottest parts of the earth; and Cypresses, Pines, Oaks, Berberries and Alders, (nearly allied to our own,) cover the mountainous districts, and elevated plains of Southern Mexico, and the chain of the Andes at the equator. Thus it is given to man in those regions to behold, without quitting his native land, all the forms of vegetation dispersed over the globe, and all the shining worlds which stud the heavenly vault from pole to pole. These, and many other of the enjoyments which nature affords, are wanting to the nations of the North. Many constellations. and vegetable forms and of the latter those which are most beautiful, (palm-tree ferns, plantains, arborescent grasses, and the finely divided feathery foliage of the mimosas,) remain forever unknown to them. Individual plants, languishing in our hot-houses, can give but a very faint idea of the majestic vegetation of the tropical zone. But the high cultivation of our languages, the glowing fancy of the poet, and the imitative art of the painter, open to us sources whence flow abundant compensations, and from whence our imagination can derive the living images of that more vigorous nature which other climes display. In the frigid north, in the midst of the barren heath, the solitary student can appreciate mentally, all that has been discovered in the most distant regions, and can create within himself a world, free and imperishable, as the spirit by which it is conceived.-Pp. 29-31. The chapter which closes with the preceding sary in every department of intellectual culture. Omni- passage is followed by a dissertation of much interscience in philosophy or science is knowledge in a state est, " on the structure and mode of action of Volof extreme dilution, useless to the world, and gratifying only to the vanity of its possessor. The piles upon which rest the temple of science could never have been driven had they been endowed with many heads; he that has driven one to the rock beneath, may rest from his labor, and be sure that his works will follow him. A subdivis ion of toil in the collection of objects of natural history, of antiquities, and of art, would do much to promote the advancement of these important branches of secular knowledge. canoes in different parts of the globe." Although the multiplication of voyages and travels has exercised a greater influence on the study of organic nature, viz., of botany and zoology, than upon the study of the inorganic bodies which compose the crust of the earth, yet each zone of the earth derives a peculiar physiognomy from the living the Sporades trachytic rocks have been upraised, ordnance, which spread terror over an area of at three different times, in three centuries. Near 35,000 square miles, was heard at the distance forms, which are either fixed or movable upon its surface. But we find on either hemisphere, from the equator to the poles, the same kind of rocks associated in groups, and the traveller " often recognizes with joy the argillaceous schists of his birthplace, and the rocks which were familiar to his eye in his native land." Geological science, however, has derived great advantages from its study under different climates. Although in any single and extensive system of mountains we find, more or less distinctly represented, all the inorganic materials which form the solid carpentry of the globe, yet observations in distant regions are necessary in studying the composition, the relative age, and the origin of rocks. Our knowledge of the structure and form of volcanoes was, till the end of the last century, drawn principally from Vesuvius and Etna, though the basin of the Mediterranean afforded better means of studying the nature and action of these fiery cones. Among of Pasto emitted a lofty column of smoke for three months continuously, and that it disappeared at the very instant, when, at the distance of 240 miles, " the great earthquake of Riobamba, and the immense eruption of mud called 'Moya' took place, causing the death of between thirty and forty thousand persons." In proof of the same fact, he adduces the sudden emergence from the sea near the Azores of the island of Sabrina, on the 30th of January, 1811, which was followed by those terrible internal commotions which, from May, 1811, to June, 1813, shook almost incessantly the West India islands, the plains of the Ohio and Mississippi, and the opposite coast of Venezuela or Caraccas. In the course of a month after this, the principal city of that province was destroyed. On the 30th April, 1811, the slumbering volcano of the island of St. Vincent broke forth, and at the very moment the explosion took place, a loud subterranean noise, like that of great pieces of Methone, in the Peloponnesus, a "monte nuovo," seen by Strabo and by Dodwell, is higher than the new volcano of Jorullo in Mexico, and Humboldt found it "surrounded with several thousand small basaltic cones, protruded from the earth, and still smoking." Volcanic fires also break out at Ischia, on the Monte Epomeo; and, according to ancient relations, lavas have flowed from fissures, suddenly opened, in the Lelantine plain, near Chalcis. On the shores of the Mediterranean, too, on several parts of the mainland of Greece, in Asia Minor, and in Auvergne, and round the plain of Lombardy, there are numerous examples of volcanic action. From these facts our author has drawn the conclusion, "that the basin of the Mediterranean, with its series of islands, might have offered to an attentive observer much that has been recently discovered, under various forms, in South America, Teneriffe, and the Aleutian Islands, near the polar circle." "The objects to be observed," he continues, were assembled within a moderate distance; yet distant voyages, and the comparison of extensive regions, in and out of Europe, have been required for the clear perception and recognition of the resemblance between volcanic phenomena and their dependence on each other." In different parts of the globe we find assemblages of volcanoes in various rounded groups, or in double lines, and we have thus the most conclusive evidence that their cause is deeply seated in the earth. All the American volcanoes are on the western coast opposite to Asia, nearly in a meridional direction, and extending 7200 geographical miles. Humboldt regards the whole plateau of Quito, whose summits are the volcanoes of Pinchincha, Cotapaxi, and Tunguragua, as a single volcanic furnace. The internal fire rushes out sometimes by one and sometimes by another vent; and in proof of the fact that there are subterranean communications between "fire emitting openings," at great distances from each other, he mentions the circumstance, that in 1797, the volcano of 628 miles from St. Vincent. The phenomena which accompanied the celebrated earthquake at Lisbon, on the 1st November, 1755, lead to the same conclusion. At the very time it took place, the lakes of Switzerland, and the sea upon the Swedish coast, were violently agitated; and at Martinique, Antigua, and Barbadoes, where the tide never exceeds thirty inches, the sea suddenly rose upwards of twenty feet. In the remaining portion of this interesting chapter, our author directs our attention chiefly to the phenomena which accompanied the last great eruption of Vesuvius, on the night of the 22d October, 1822. It had been supposed by several writers that the crater of Vesuvius had undergone an entire change from preceding eruptions; but our author has shown that this is not the case, and that the error had arisen from the observers having confounded "the outlines of the margin of the crater with those of the cones of eruption, accidentally formed in the middle of the crater, on its floor or bottom, which has been upheaved by vapors." During the period from 1816-1818, such a cone had gradually risen above the south-eastern margin of the crater, and the eruption of February, 1822, had raised it about 112 feet above the northwest margin. This singular cone, which from Naples appeared to be a true summit of the mountain, fell in with a dreadful noise on the eruption of the 22d October, 1822, so that the floor of the crater, which had been constantly accessible since 1811, is now almost 800 feet lower than the northern, and 218 lower than the southern edge of the volcano." In the last eruption, on the night of the 23d to to the 24th October, 1822, twenty-four hours after the falling in of the great cone of scoriæ, which has been mentioned, and when the small but numerous currents of lava had already flowed off, the fiery eruption of ashes and rapilli commenced: it continued without intermission for twelve days, but was greatest in the first four days. During this period the detonations in the interior of the volcano |