Because they contribute to keep the bodies of animals warm, not only by their non-conducting property keeping in the heat of the animals, but by supplying carbon abundantly to combine with oxygen during respiration, and thereby developing animal heat.
1206. Why are oil and fat-forming trees found most abundantly in hot climates?
Because, in hot countries, the formation of large quantities of fat in animal bodies would oppress living creatures with heat; fats and oils are, therefore, produced in those countries chiefly by vegetables, and are used externally by the Asiatics and Africans as an external unction for cooling the skin, and as perfumes which give inspiriting properties to the air, rendered oppressive by excess of heat.
1207. Why are succulent fruits most abundant in tropical climates?
Because they are rendered necessary in those climates by the excessive heat, and are found to have a most beneficial effect in cooling, purifying the blood of the inhabitants of tropical countries; while the grandeur of their foliage, and the richness of their flowers, are in perfect keeping with the intensity of light and heat, and serve, by throwing dense shades over the earth, to cool its surface, and to offer to living creatures a pleasant retreat from the rays of the burning sun.
The following sketch of Botanical Geography should be read attentively after the reader has gone through the whole of the Chapters of "Reasons." The technical terms employed in the course of the article are nearly all explained at 1212, and should be committed to memory at the commencement of the perusal. Mimosa means a sensitive plant; concentric zones, circular lines spreading from a centre; arborescent, resembling trees; Gramineæ, grass-like. The botanical names represent individual plants.
"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful:"
1208. When treating of the geographical distribution of vegetables, we have to mark the general arrangements indicated, and the agencies that have evidently operated in promoting the diffusion of floral tribes. Vegetation occurs over the whole globe, therefore, under the most opposite conditions. Plants flourish in the bosom of the ocean as well as on land, under the extremes of cold and heat in polar and equatorial regions, on the hardest rocks and the soft alluvium of the plains, amidst the perpetual snow of lofty mountains, and in springs at the temperature of boiling water, in situations never penetrated by the solar rays, as the dark vaults of caverns, and the walls of mines, as well as freely exposed to the influences of light and air. But these diverse circumstances have different species and genera. There is only one state which seems fatal to the existence of vegetable life—the entire absence of humidity.