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That varieties of this doubtful nature are far from uncommon cannot be disputed. Compare the several floras of Great Britain, of France or of the United States, drawn up by different botanists, and see what a surprising number of forms have been ranked by one botanist as good species, and by another as mere varieties. Mr.
Attempt after attempt has been made to explain the causes of the variations and effects of climate, their influence on vegetation, the appearance of certain floras in localities where they might be least expected, and to separate the natural and regular from the accidental.
As a rule all of the more striking elementary types have been described by local botanists under distinct specific names, while they are thrown together into the larger systematic species by other authors, who study the distribution of plants over larger portions of the world. Everything depends on the point of view taken. Large floras require large species.
These months are only approximate; later or earlier the rain-laden wind may drift up the water gate of the Colorado from the Gulf, and the land sets its seasons by the rain. The desert floras shame us with their cheerful adaptations to the seasonal limitations. Their whole duty is to flower and fruit, and they do it hardly, or with tropical luxuriance, as the rain admits.
Darwin, after making a laborious analysis of many floras, found that those genera which are represented by a large number of species contain a greater number of variable species, relatively speaking, than the smaller genera or those less numerously represented. Dr.
The causes which tend to diffusion are here most powerful, and have led to such intermingling of the floras of adjacent regions that none but broad and general divisions can now be detected. These remarks have an important bearing on the problem of dividing the surface of the earth into great regions, distinguished by the radical difference of their natural productions.
It should be observed that the northern species and forms found in the southern parts of the southern hemisphere, and on the mountain-ranges of the intertropical regions, are not arctic, but belong to the northern temperate zones. As Mr. H. C. Watson has recently remarked, "In receding from polar towards equatorial latitudes, the Alpine or mountain floras really become less and less arctic."
Now, when you go home to your own rooms, supposing them to be richly decorated at all, examine what that decoration consists of. You will find Cupids, Graces, Floras, Dianas, Jupiters, Junos. But you will not find, except in the form of an engraving, bought principally for its artistic beauty, either Christ, or the Virgin, or Lazarus and Dives.
Hebes, and Floras, and Helens, and Graces are street-walkers to her. She is a statue and beauty when standing or sitting; grace itself when she moves." As he is writing to a lady, he proceeds to describe her dress, which to ladies of the present day may still have its interest: "She was dressed in silver, scattered over with laurier roses; few diamonds; and feathers, much lower than the monument."
But the case is very different; and Alph. de Candolle has well remarked, in his great and admirable work, that floras gain by naturalisation, proportionally with the number of the native genera and species, far more in new genera than in new species. To give a single instance: in the last edition of Dr.
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