Ch. V.3

LOCATION OF SPECIES.

23

peds of America and those of the Old World. Thesame phenomenon has, in later times, been forced ina striking manner upon our attention, by the examin-ation of New Holland, where the indigenous speciesof animals and plants were found to be, almost withoutexception, distinct from those known in other parts ofthe world.

But the extent of this parcelling out of the globeamongst different nations, as they have been termed,of plants and animals — the universality of a pheno-menon so extraordinary and unexpected, may beconsidered as one of the most interesting facts clearlyestablished by the advance of modern science;

Scarcely fourteen hundred species of plants appearto have been known and described by the Greeks,Romans, and Arabians. At present, more than threethousand species are enumerated, as natives of our ownisland.* In other parts of the world there have beencollected, perhaps, upwards of seventy thousand species.It was not to be supposed, therefore, that the ancientsshould have acquired any correct notions respectingwhat may be called the geography of plants, althoughthe influence of climate on the character of the vege-tation could hardly have escaped their observation.

Antecedently to investigation, there was no reasonfor presuming that the vegetable productions, growingwild in the eastern hemisphere, should be unlike thoseof the western, in the same latitude; nor that theplants of the Cape of Good Hope should be unlikethose of the South of Europe ; situations where theclimate is little dissimilar. The contrary suppositionwould have seemed more probable, and we might

Barton’s Lectures on the Geography of Plants, p. 2,