feet; it produces, however, sometimes not less than 600,000 flowers at the same time. The Adansonia tree is found in Senegal. It is forty feet in circumference. "Stripped of its foliage,” says Molliena, "it resembles an immense wooden tower. This majestic mass is the only monument of antiquity to be met with in Africa.” The soil, climate, and cultivation of Africa, and its islands, present many curious vegetable phenomena. Pineapples, long supposed to be foreign to that continent, were found by Tuckey on the plains, where Europeans had never previously been. At the mouth of the Gambia, Park saw the orange and banana of the West Indies: and yet not a single indigenous species, or any of the principal genera of plants, at St. Helena, are found in any part of the coast of Congo. Nor does the vegetation of that coast bear any resemblance to that of more Southern Africa; while the plants of Egypt and Abyssinia bear as little affinity to those of the Gambia, the Formosa, and the Senegal. с Chief of the plants, hitherto discovered on the Congo, are found to exist in the equinoctial parts of New Holland; in Van Diemen's Land; the South of Europe; and the North of Africa. Some few, however, there are, which have elsewhere been found only in Equinoctial America. The best plants on this coast are natives of other continents. From Asia came the orange, the cane, the tamarind, and the plantain from America the capsicum, the maize, the papaw, the tobacco, the cassava, and the pine-apple. Some plants, however, as the begoniacæ, are found in the Isles of France, Bourbon, Johanna, and Madagascar; and yet no research d has discovered them on the neighbouring continent; nor are there any of the laurinæ, though they are found in Tenea Trav. in Africa, p. 41. 4to. b Tuckey, p. 423. 4to. c Ibid. 469. A.D. 1818. e Brown's Observations on Prof. Smith's Collection from Congo.-Tuckey, p. 464. Appendix. 4to. riffe and Madeira. All this may be regarded as being very extraordinary. The maize and the pine-apple, the papaw and the tobacco of Africa, are said to have come originally from America; and the tamarind and sugar-cane from Asia. But in what manner they were introduced no probable conjecture has been formed. The Cinnamon, too, is very remarkable in its emigrations. This tree is found in Ceylon, Malabar, Sumatra, Tonquin, Cochin-China, Caubul, Borneo, Timor, the Loo-choo Archipelago, Floris, Tobago, and the Philippine Islands. It grows, also, in the Isles of Bourbon and Mauritius; in the Brazils; the Sichelle Islands; Jamaica and Guadaloupe. In 1772 it was introduced from the Isle of France into Guiana; and since that time into the Antilles. Now it is not very difficult to account for the appearance of this tree in so many longitudes; since, besides those, in which man is known to have had a share, birds might propagate its seed into some regions; and the tides might navigate its roots, and even its trunk, to the shores of others. But why has heath been denied to the western continents? For, with the exception of a dwarf species found in Baffin's Bay, it is totally unknown, as a native, in both. We shall be told, by some botanists, that there is no soil adapted for its culture; and by some naturalists, that there is no animal to feed upon its leaves. The traveller, however, will inform us, that there is, in America, not only the very climate, but the soil, in which it is accustomed to vegetate; and abundance of animals, that would delight in its herbage. European science has searched the civilized world; but only a small portion of savage plants, if so they may be called, are yet known; for even the numerous species, growing in the new world, examined by Bonpland and Humboldt, a a Vide Nova Genera et Species Plantarum, quas in peregrinatione orbis novi collegerunt.-Amat. Bonpland et Alex. de Humboldt, 1815. Parisiis. form but a small portion of the vegetable wealth of that magnificent continent. The coasts of New South Wales have yet been but superficially explored: the interior still less. But its vegetable wealth may, in some measure, be conceived from the circumstance, that it affords even to a superficial survey twelve species of the pultenea; fourteen of the eucalyptus; seventeen of the hakea; twenty-one of the banksia; and thirty-one of the melaleuca. While the Cape of Good Hope affords not only forty-nine species of aloe, and fifty-five of the oxalis; but seventy-four of the protea; and not less than 304 species of heath. In 1763, Linnæus reckoned 7,500 species of plants. In 1784, Murray, 9,000. In 1806, Person, 27,000. In 1809, there were reckoned 44,000. In 1816, M. Decandolle supposed them to amount to 50,000:-and as Spain, Dalmatia, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, the north-west coast of America, the centre of Africa, New Holland, Thibet, China, Cochin China, and other countries have been but imperfectly examined, he supposes the number to exceed even 100,000. Humboldt calculated vegetables at 44,000: of which 6,000 are without sexual organs: in Europe 7,000; in Africa 3,000; in New Holland and the South Sea Islands 5000; in the temperate zone of Asia 1500; in the torrid zone of Asia 4500; in the two temperate zones of America 4000; and in the torrid zone of that continent 13,000. Here are very curious results. In New Holland,—almost unpeopled,—and the South-Sea Islands,-evidently of a comparatively recent formation,—we find nearly as many species of plants as there are in all Europe;-more than in all Africa, and nearly as many as in all Asia. How strikingly do the celebrated lines of Gray recur to our imagination! Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And not incurious is it to observe the vast profusion of vegetable beings, that receive life and sustenance in the torrid zone of America. We may extend our surprise, too, to the curious circumstance, that in Lapland there are so many species of rare plants, that when Linnæus visited that country, he was struck with astonishment. The plant, which grows highest in Lapland is the umblicated lychen; and the only bird, which flies over it, is the Emberiza rivalis (the Snow-bunting). Some plants are exceedingly scarce; and others are known only in particular places. The sea-weed, fucus ramentaceus, is found scarcely any where but in Iceland; though the waves might waft it from one pole to another. Schomberg found in Caffraria a species of spotted ixia, which bears a cluster of green flowers, something like an ear of corn. Dr. Reynhaut, of Elmina Castle, found in the Aquapun country a new species of aloe, of which the natives make thread:-a citron with indented leaves:-and a tree of a new genus, bearing flowers like tulips. He found also many unknown trees and shrubs; and he expresses a belief, that not one twentieth of the native plants are to be found in any other part of the African coast. Pallas discovered a nondescript daffodil, having broad leaves, winged capsules, and a plurality of flowers, on the top of the mountainous ridge near Arsagar. Dr. Davy saw a tree, of the rhododendron genus, upon the peak of Adam, which is seen in no other part of the world. Upon the high mountains of the Caraccas, also, grows an extremely scarce and magnificent plant. It was named after the German poet, Freyherr Von der Lüke. It is esteemed sacred; and no one is permitted to take even a specimen of it. The Malabar camphor-tree is found only in the islands of Borneo and Sumatra ;-and Rumphius observed, that those trees, which e a Maculata. b Dryobalanops camphora.-Crawford's Indian Archipelago, vol. i, 516. Herbarium Amboinense, tom. ii. p. 66. yield cassia, cinnamon, and clove bark, are seldom, if ever, found in the same countries. Logwood is a native of the East and West Indies; but it grows no where so abundantly as in the Bay of Campeachy. The mahogany-tree, also, though entirely unknown to the ancients, is a native of the two Indian hemispheres. There are two species; the mahogani, and the febrifuga; the former peculiar to the West; the latter to the East:-and it would be difficult to ascertain with precision, which is the parent; though probability assigns that honour to the for mer. The introduction of wheat into New Spain is traced to three or four grains, which a negro servant of Cortez picked out among the stores of rice, that had been sent from Europe, for subsisting the troops: and the monks of Quito still preserve, as a precious relic, the earthen jar, in which Father Rixi of Ghent, gathered the first crop, from a spot of ground cleared away in front of the convent. In Mexico there is a tree, the flower of which, before it has expanded, resembles the closed hand of a monkey; when unfolded, the open hand. From this circumstance it derived its name of chiranthodeadron. Not long since there existed only one specimen of this tree in the known world. It grows, and has flourished, for many ages, in Toluca, a city of Mexico; where it is esteemed sacred; and whither persons travel from great distances in order to procure its flowers. This tree has been fully described by Larretequi, a Mexican physician, whose work, written in Spanish, has been translated into French by Mons. Lescallier. Previous to the year 1787 this was the only tree of its genus known to be in existence: but some botanists having visited Toluca in that year, they took slips, and planted them in the royal garden in Mexico, where one of them took root, and had grown in 1804 to the height of forty-five feet. Humboldt and his friend Bonpland visited Roxburgh's Plants of the Coast of Coromandel, 17. a |