14. I have said that Milton has told us more in these few lines than any botanist could. I will prove my saying by placing in comparison with them two passages of description by the most imaginative and generally well-trained scientific man since Linnæus—Humboldt—which, containing much that is at this moment of special use to us, are curious also in the confusion even of the two orders of annual and perennial plants, and show, therefore, the extreme need of most careful initial work in this distinction of the reign of Cora from that of Kronos.
"The disk of the setting sun appeared like a globe of fire suspended over the savannah; and its last rays, as they swept the earth, illumined the extremities of the grass, strongly agitated by the evening breeze. In the low and humid places of the equinoxial zone, even when the gramineous plants and reeds present the aspect of a meadow, of turf, a rich decoration of the picture is usually wanting. I mean that variety of wild flowers which, scarcely rising above the grass, seem to lie upon a smooth bed of verdure. Between the tropics, the strength and luxury of vegetation give such a development to plants, that the smallest of the dicotyledonous family become shrubs.[[62]] It would seem as if the
liliaceous plants, mingled with the gramina, assumed the place of the flowers of our meadows. Their form is indeed striking; they dazzle by the variety and splendor of their colours; but, too high above the soil, they disturb that harmonious relation which exists among the plants that compose our meadows and our turf. Nature, in her beneficence, has given the landscape under every zone its peculiar type of beauty.
"After proceeding four hours across the savannahs, we entered into a little wood composed of shrubs and small trees, which is called El Pejual; no doubt because of the great abundance of the 'Pejoa' (Gaultheria odorata,) a plant with very odoriferous leaves. The steepness of the mountain became less considerable, and we felt an indescribable pleasure in examining the plants of this region. Nowhere, perhaps, can be found collected together in so small a space of ground, productions so beautiful, and so remarkable in regard to the geography of plants. At the height of a thousand toises, the lofty savannahs of the hills terminate in a zone of shrubs, which by their appearance, their tortuous branches, their stiff leaves, and the dimensions and beauty of their purple flowers, remind us of what is called in the Cordilleras of the Andes the vegetation of the paramos[[63]] and the punas. We find there the
family of the Alpine rhododendrons, the thibaudias, the andromedas, the vacciniums, and those befarias[[64]] with resinous leaves, which we have several times compared to the rhododendron of our European Alps.
"Even when nature does not produce the same species in analogous climates, either in the plains of isothermal parallels, or on table-lands the temperature of which resembles that of places nearer the poles, we still remark a striking resemblance of appearance and physiognomy in the vegetation of the most distant countries. This phenomenon is one of the most curious in the history of organic forms. I say the history; for in vain would reason forbid man to form hypotheses on the origin of things: he is not the less tormented with these insoluble problems of the distribution of beings."
15. Insoluble—yes, assuredly, poor little beaten phantasms of palpitating clay that we are—and who asked us to solve it? Even this Humboldt, quiet-hearted and modest watcher of the ways of Heaven, in the real make of him, came at last to be so far puffed up by his vain science in declining years that he must needs write a Kosmos of things in the Universe, forsooth, as if he knew all about them! when he was not able meanwhile, (and does not seem even to have desired the ability,) to put the slightest Kosmos into his own 'Personal Narrative'; but leaves one to gather what one wants out of
its wild growth; or rather, to wash or winnow what may be useful out of its débris, without any vestige either of reference or index; and I must look for these fragmentary sketches of heath and grass through chapter after chapter about the races of the Indian and religion of the Spaniard,—these also of great intrinsic value, but made useless to the general reader by interspersed experiment on the drifts of the wind and the depths of the sea.
16. But one more fragment out of a note (vol. iii., p. 494) I must give, with reference to an order of the Rhododendrons as yet wholly unknown to me.
"The name of vine tree, 'uvas camaronas' (Shrimp grapes?) is given in the Andes to plants of the genus Thibaudia on account of their large succulent fruit. Thus the ancient botanists give the name of Bear's vine, 'Uva Ursi,' and vine of Mount Ida, 'Vitis Idea,' to an Arbutus and Myrtillus which belong, like the Thibaudiæ, to the family of the Ericineæ."