Annals and Magazine of Natural History Author:RICHARD TAYLOR, W Jardine 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: II.— Mejnoirs on Geographic Botany. By Richard Brinsley Hinds, Surgeon, R.N., Fell. Roy. Coll. Surg. In the ninth volume of the 'Annals of Natural History' I ... more »have dwelt with some detail on the agents which constitute climate, more particularly as they influence vegetation. It will there be seen that a great number of different climates are produced by the repeated changes in the relations which the constituents bear to each other, and every portion of the globe, of any extent, will produce a state of things influencing its climate, which perhaps it would not be possible to match exactly at any other place. Whether vegetation obeys minutely these movements in climate is yet to be determined, but it is not improbable that there is a very powerful connexion between the flora of any particular region and surrounding cireumstances; as not only every continent has its own peculiar forms, but even different portions of a continent have an assemblage of forms which are repeated feebly elsewhere. Before, however, adverting to the varieties which vegetation presents, there are some other cireumstances for our consideration. The earliest mention of the vegetable kingdom is contained in the sacred writings; we are there informed that the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind. Further than this they do not acquaint us with any facts on the subject, excepting that we find that it occupied one of the earliest of the omnipotent labours, preceding in its existence all other organized beings. Our curiosity as to the early state of vegetation, its amount, or how the whole world has been covered with its members, remains still unsatisfied. These were left for the subsequent inquiries of man, and pe...« less