Aspects of nature, in different lands and different climates (Vol. 2 of 2) / with scientific elucidations

by Alexander von Humboldt

Those, therefore, who can view nature with a comprehensive glance and apart from local phenomena, may see from the poles to the equator organic life and vigour gradually augment with the augmentation of vivifying heat. But, in the course of this progressive increase there are reserved to each zone its own peculiar beauties; to the tropics, variety and grandeur of vegetable forms; to the north, the aspect of its meadows and green pastures, and the periodic reawakening of nature at the first breath of the mild air of spring. Each zone, besides its own peculiar advantages, has its own distinctive character. Primeval laws of organisation, notwithstanding a certain degree of freedom in the abnormal development of single parts, bind all animal and vegetable forms to fixed ever-recurring types. As we recognise in distinct organic beings a determinate physiognomy, and as descriptive botany and zoology, in the restricted sense of the terms, consist in a detailed analysis of animal and vegetable forms, so each region of the earth has a natural physiognomy peculiar to itself. The idea indicated by the painter by expressions such as “Swiss nature,” “Italian sky,” &c., rests on a partial perception of this local character in the aspect of nature. The azure of the sky, the lights and shadows, the haze resting on the distance, the forms of animals, the succulency of the plants and herbage, the brightness of the foliage, the outline of the mountains, are all elements which determine the total impression characteristic of each district or region. It is true that in every zone the same kinds of rocks, trachyte, basalt, porphyritic schists, and dolomite, form groups having the same physiognomy and aspect. The greenstone precipices of South America and Mexico resemble those of the Fichtel-Gebirge of Germany, just as among animals the form of the Allco, or native race of dogs of the New Continent, corresponds perfectly with that of the European race. For the inorganic crust of the globe shews itself independent of climatic influences; whether it be that differences of climate depending on differences of latitude were more recent than the formation of the rocks, or that the mass of the earth in solidifying and parting with its heat regulated its own temperature,[10] instead of receiving it from without. Thus all the kinds of rock with which we are acquainted may be met with in all parts of the globe, and everywhere affect the same characteristic forms. Everywhere basalt rises in twin mountains and truncated cones; everywhere the porphyritic trap appears in grotesquely arranged masses, and granite in rounded summits. Also similar forms of trees—pines and oaks—adorn the declivities of the mountains of Sweden, and those of the most southern part of Mexico.[11] Yet, notwithstanding these correspondences of form, and this similarity of outline in the component parts of the picture, their grouping gives to the whole the greatest difference of character.

Mineralogy is not more distinct from geology than is the individual description of natural objects from a general description of the physiognomy of nature. George Forster, in the narrative of his voyages, and in his other publications,—Goethe, in the descriptions of nature which so many of his immortal works contain,—Buffon, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and Chateaubriand, have traced with inimitable truth of description the character of some of the zones into which the earth is divided. Not only do such descriptions afford us mental enjoyment of a high order, but the knowledge of the character which nature assumes in different regions is moreover intimately connected with the history of man, and of his civilisation. For although the commencement of this civilisation is not solely determined by physical relations, yet the direction which it takes, the national character, and the more grave or gay dispositions of men, are dependent in a very high degree on climatic influences. How powerfully have the skies of Greece acted on its inhabitants! The nations settled in the fair and happy regions bounded by the Euphrates, the Halys, and the Egean Sea, also early attained amenity of manners and delicacy of sentiment. When in the middle ages religious enthusiasm suddenly re-opened the sacred East to the nations of Europe who were sinking back into barbarism, our ancestors in returning to their homes brought with them gentler manners, acquired in those delightful valleys. The poetry of the Greeks, and the ruder songs of the primitive northern nations, owe great part of their peculiar character to the aspect of the plants and animals seen by the bard, to the mountains and valleys which surrounded him, and to the air which he breathed. And to recall more familiar objects, who does not feel himself differently affected in the dark shade of the beech, on hills crowned with scattered fir-trees, or on the turfy pasture, where the wind rustles in the trembling foliage of the birch? These trees of our native land have often suggested or recalled to our minds images and thoughts, either of a melancholy, of a grave and elevating, or of a cheerful character. The influence of the physical on the moral world,—that reciprocal and mysterious action and reaction of the material and the immaterial,—gives to the study of nature, when regarded from higher points of view, a peculiar charm, still too little recognised.

But if the characteristic aspect of different portions of the earth’s surface depends conjointly on all external phenomena,—if the contours of the mountains, the physiognomy of plants and animals, the azure of the sky, the form of the clouds, and the transparency of the atmosphere, all combine in forming that general impression which is the result of the whole, yet it cannot be denied that the vegetable covering with which the whole earth is adorned is the principal element in the impression. Animal forms are deficient in mass, and the individual power of motion which animals possess, as well as often the smallness of their size, withdraw them from our sight. The vegetable forms, on the contrary, produce a greater effect by their magnitude and by their constant presence. The age of trees is marked by their size, and the union of age with the manifestation of constantly renewed vigour is a charm peculiar to the vegetable kingdom. The gigantic Dragon-tree of Orotava,[12] (as sacred in the eyes of the inhabitants of the Canaries as the olive-tree in the Citadel of Athens, or the Elm of Ephesus), the diameter of which I found, when I visited those Islands, to be more than 16 feet, had the same colossal size, when the French adventurers, the Béthencourts, conquered these gardens of the Hesperides in the beginning of the fifteenth century; yet it still flourishes, as if in perpetual youth, bearing flowers and fruit. A tropical forest of Hymenæas and Cæsalpinieæ may perhaps present to us a monument of more than a thousand years’ standing.

If we embrace in one general view the different species of phænogamous plants at present contained in herbariums, the number of which may now be estimated at considerably above 80000,[13] we shall recognise in this prodigious multitude certain leading forms to which many others may be referred. In determining these leading forms or types, on the individual beauty, the distribution, and the grouping of which the physiognomy of the vegetation of a country depends, we must not follow the march of systems of botany, in which from other motives the parts chiefly regarded are the smaller organs of propagation, the flowers and the fruit; we must, on the contrary, consider solely that which by its mass stamps a peculiar character on the total impression produced, or on the aspect of the country. Among the leading forms of vegetation to which I allude, there are, indeed, some which coincide with families belonging to the “natural systems” of botanists. Such are the forms of Bananas, Palms, Casuarineæ, and Coniferæ. But the botanic systematist divides many groups which the physiognomist is obliged to unite. When plants or trees present themselves in masses, the outlines and distribution of the leaves and the form of the stems and of the branches are blended together. The painter (and here the artist’s delicate tact and appreciation of nature are demanded) can distinguish in the middle distance and background of a landscape groves of palms or pines from beech woods, but he cannot distinguish the latter from woods consisting of other deciduous forest trees.

Above sixteen different forms of vegetation are principally concerned in determining the aspect or physiognomy of Nature. I mention only those which I have observed in the course of my travels both in the New and Old Continents, where during many years I have attentively examined the vegetation of the regions comprised between the 60th degree of North and the 12th degree of South latitude. The number of these forms will no doubt be considerably augmented when travellers shall have penetrated farther into the interior of Continents, and discovered new genera of plants. In the South-eastern part of Asia, the interior of Africa and of New Holland, and in South America from the river of the Amazons to the province of Chiquitos, the vegetation is still entirely unknown to us. How if at some future time a country should be discovered in which ligneous fungi, Cenomyce rangiferina, or mosses, should form tall trees? The Neckera dendroides, a German species of moss, is in fact arborescent; and bamboos (which are arborescent grasses) and the tree ferns of the tropics, which are often higher than our lime-trees and alders, now present to the European a sight as surprising as would be that of a forest of tree mosses to its discoverer. The absolute size and the degree of development attained by organic forms of the same family (whether plants or animals), depend on laws which are still unknown to us. In each of the great divisions of the animal kingdom, insects, crustacea, reptiles, birds, fishes, or mammalia, the size of the body oscillates between certain extreme limits. But these limits, which have been established by observation as far as it has yet gone, may be corrected by the discovery of species with which we are still unacquainted.

In land animals the higher temperatures of the low latitudes appear to have favoured organic development. The small and slender form of our lizards is exchanged in the south for the gigantic, heavy, and cuirassed bodies of crocodiles. In the formidable tiger, lion, and jaguar, we see repeated, on a larger scale, the form of the common cat, one of the smallest of our domestic animals. If we penetrate into the interior of the earth, and search the cemeteries in which the plants and animals of the ancient world lie entombed, the fossil remains which we discover not only announce a distribution inconsistent with our present climates,—they also disclose to us gigantic forms that contrast no less with those which now surround us, than does the simple heroism of the Greeks with the character of human greatness in modern times. Has the temperature of our planet undergone considerable changes,—possibly of periodical recurrence? If the proportion between land and sea, and even the height of the aerial ocean and its pressure,[14] have not always been the same, the physiognomy of nature, and the dimensions and forms of organised beings, must also have been subjected to various alterations. Huge Pachydermata, Mastodons, Owen’s Mylodon robustus, and the Colossochelys, a land-tortoise above six feet high, have existed, and in the vegetable kingdom there have been forests composed of gigantic Lepidodendra, cactus-like Stigmarias, and numerous kinds of Cycadeæ. Unable to depict fully according to its present features the physiognomy of our planet in this its later age, I will only venture to attempt to indicate the characters which principally distinguish those vegetable groups which appear to me to be most strongly marked by physiognomic differences. However favoured by the richness and flexibility of our native language, it is still an arduous and hazardous undertaking when we attempt to trace in words that which belongs rather to the imitative art of the painter. I feel also the necessity of avoiding as much as possible the wearisome impression almost inseparable from all lengthened enumerations.

We will begin with palms,[15] the loftiest and noblest of all vegetable forms, that to which the prize of beauty has been assigned by the concurrent voice of nations in all ages; for the earliest civilisation of mankind belonged to countries bordering on the region of palms, and to parts of Asia where they abound. Their lofty, slender, ringed, and, in some cases, prickly stems, terminate in aspiring and shining either fanlike or pinnated foliage. The leaves are frequently curled, like those of some gramineæ. Smooth polished stems of palms carefully measured by me had attained 192 English feet in height. In receding from the equator and approaching the temperate zone, palms diminish in height and beauty. The indigenous vegetation of Europe only comprises a single representative of this form of plants, the sea-coast Dwarf-palm or Chamærops, which, in Spain and Italy, extends as far north as the 44th parallel of latitude. The true climate of palms has a mean annual temperature of 20°.5-22° Reaumur (78°.2-81°.5 Fahr). The Date, which is much inferior in beauty to several other genera, has been brought from Africa to the south of Europe, where it lives, but can scarcely be said to flourish, in a mean temperature not exceeding 12°-13°.5 Reaumur (59°-62°.4 Fahr). Stems of palms and fossil bones of elephants are found buried beneath the surface of the earth in northern countries, in positions which make it appear probable that their presence is not to be accounted for by their having been drifted thither from the tropics, and we are led to infer that in the course of the great revolutions which our planet has undergone, great changes of climate, and of the physiognomy of nature as dependent on climate, have taken place.

In all parts of the globe the palm form is accompanied by that of Plantains or Bananas; the Scitamineæ and Musaceæ of botanists, Heliconia, Amomum, and Strelitzia. In this form, the stems, which are low, succulent, and almost herbaceous, are surmounted by long, silky, delicately-veined leaves of a thin loose texture, and bright and beautiful verdure. Groves of plantains and bananas form the ornament of moist places in the equatorial regions. It is on their fruits that the subsistence of a large part of the inhabitants of the torrid zone chiefly depends, and, like the farinaceous cereals of the north, they have followed man from the infancy of his civilisation[16]. The aboriginal site of this nutritious plant is placed by some Asiatic fables or traditions on the banks of the Euphrates, and by others, with more probability, at the foot of the Himalaya. Grecian fables named the fields of Enna as the happy native land of the cereals; and if in northern climes, where corn is cultivated in immense unbroken fields, their monotonous aspect adds but little to the beauty of the landscape, the inhabitant of the tropics, on the other hand, in rearing groves of plantains wherever he fixes his habitation, contributes to the adornment of the earth’s surface by the extension of one of the most noble and beautiful forms of the vegetable world.

The form of Malvaceæ[17] and Bombaceæ, represented by Ceiba, Cavanillesia, and the Mexican hand-tree Cheirostemon, has enormously thick trunks; large, soft, woolly leaves, either heart-shaped or indented; and superb flowers frequently of a purple or crimson hue. It is to this group of plants that the Baobab, or monkey bread-tree, (Adansonia digitata), belongs, which, with a very moderate elevation, has a diameter of 32 English feet, and is probably the largest and most ancient organic monument on our planet. In Italy the Malvaceæ already begin to impart to the vegetation a peculiar southern character.

The delicately pinnated foliage of the Mimosa form[18], of which Acacia, Desmanthus, Gleditschia, Porleria, and Tamarindus are important members, is entirely wanting in our temperate zone in the old continent, though found in the United States, where, in corresponding latitudes, vegetation is more varied and more vigorous than in Europe. The umbrella-like arrangement of the branches, resembling that seen in the stone pine of Italy, is very frequent among the Mimosas. The deep blue of the tropic sky seen through their finely divided foliage has an extremely picturesque effect.