A very
beautiful geography of the plants of Mount AEtna has recently been published
by Philippi. See 'Linnaea', 1832, s. 733.
He ingeniously compared the Alpine flora with the flora of plains situated
in different latitudes, and was the first to observe the influence exercised
in mountainous regions, on the distribution of plants by the elevation of
the ground above the level of the sea, and by the distance from the poles in
flat countries. Menzel, in an inedited work on the flora of Japan,
accidentally made use of the term 'geography of plants'; and the same
expression occurs in the fanciful but graceful work of Bernardin de St.
Pierre, 'Etudes de la Nature'. A scientific treatment of the subject began,
however, only when the geography of plants was intimately associated with
the study of the distribution
p 348
of heat over the surface of the earth, and when the arrangement of vegetable
forms in natural families admitted of a numerical estimate being made of the
different forms which increase of decrease as we recede from the equator
toward the poles, and of the relations in which, in diffrent parts of the
earth, each family stood with reference to the whole mass of phanerogamic
indigenous plants of the same region. I consider it a happy circumstance
that, at the time during which I devoted my attention almost exclusively to
botanical pursuits, I was led by the aspect of the grand and strongly
characterized features of tropical scenery to direct my investigations
toward these subjects.
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