Ever since 1862, these distinguished professors have had the great
plant-charts of Mr. Arthur Renfrey before them, with the warm temperate
zone north accurately laid down in its proper isotherms, as well as the
different classes of vegetation peculiar to the two regions referred to,
and some general conclusions of value to science might have been drawn
therefrom. Besides, the fact of these similar antipodal flora was well
known to many of them before this chart was issued. They also knew that
all along the higher mountain ranges of this country, as well as in
Europe, the same alpine flora was to be found under the same or similar
alpine conditions. From Mt. St. Elias, in Alaska, to the Central American
States, and thence, through the Isthmus, to the southern extremity of the
Andes in South Patagonia, there is one unbroken line of alpine vegetation
pressing the sides or summits of the loftier mountain ranges, at altitudes
correspondingly varying with the latitudes in which they occur. And the
same is true of the Alps in Europe and the Himalaya ranges in Asia, if not
of all the mountain systems of the globe.
These, and hundreds of other equally suggestive facts, all pointing to
geographical, climatic, and other influencing conditions, as the real
objective points of inquiry, have been constantly before our botanical
friends; and yet they have been content with Mr. Darwin's theory of
climbing mountains to cross the geographical equator, under the impression
that an enormous ice-cap, or rather prodigious "ice-ulster," would
ultimately drift them into the southern hemisphere, or enable them to
"coast" their way thither with the greatest imaginable ease. But why
insist upon the migration of plants growing in the lowlands and about the
bases and sides of mountains, and not suggest some means of transport for
the equally beautiful flora, known as "alpine," on the mountain summits of
the earth? These are distributed, as we have before shown, over all our
mountain systems, in all latitudes and in all parts of the globe, as well
as in the higher regions of vegetation as we approach the north pole.
Surely, the delicate little harebells of these alpine regions should
attract some interest, if not sympathy, from those who are constantly
hunting up means of transport for the more hardy and robust plants that
seem able to take care of themselves almost anywhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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