The Quarterly Journal of Science and the Arts (Volume 2) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Art. III. General Views of Vegetable Nature. From the French of C. F. Bhissead Mirbel, Member of tht Institute of France. Paris, 1815. The following- Summary of the General Phenomena of Vegetation, appears to us to constitute the best Lecture on the subject that bas yet appeared. ] We propose in this place to call your attention to the following points. The law which apportions the distribution of the different tribes of vegetables over the face of our globe; the influence which climate, elevation, aspect, and soil have upon beings of this nature; and the eS'eet which plants, in their turn, produce on the exterior bed of soil, the temperature from latitude or position, as well as the general constitution of the atmosphere. Each of these points will be passed in rapid view. Were it even our intention to go far into the subjects, they must presently grow too vast for the time we could afford to them; while on the other hand, out progress would be impeded by numberless difficulties; for naturalists are yet very far from having collected the facts requisite to estimate, with any thing like precision, the part allotted to vegetables in the system of the earth. Multitudes of different species of plants are found spread over the whole surface of the globe; like animals, these are endowed with the faculty of encreasing their races to infinity; and differ from each other as much by their interior structure as external appearance; they have each its pecaliar wants, and, if we may be allowed the terms, its separate habits and instinct. We see that some species belong to the mountains, others to the vallies, and others to the plains; some affect a clayey soil, some a chalky one, others one of a quartzoee nature, while many will thrive in no place but where the soil is impregna...