Considerations of this nature, by their tendency to generalization, impress
a nobler character on the physical description of the globe, and enable us
to understand how the aspect of the scenery, that is to say, the impression
produced upon the mind by the physiognomy of the vegetation, depends upon
the local distribution, the number, and the luxuriance of growth of the
vegetable forms predominating in the general mass. The catalogues of
organized beings to which was formerly given the pompous title of 'Systems
of Nature', present us with an admirably connected arrangement by analogies
of structure, either in the perfected development of these beings, or in the
different phases which, in accordance with the views of a spiral evolution,
affect in vegetables the leaves, bracts, calyx, corolla and fructifying
organs; and in animals, with more or less symmetrical regularity, the
cellular and fibrous tissues, and their perfect or but obscurely developed
articulations. But these pretended systems of nature, however ingenious
their mode of classification may be, do not show us organic beings as they
are distributed in groups throughout our planet, according to their
different relations of latitude and elevation above the level of the sea,
and to climatic influences, which are owing to general and often very remote
causes.
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