If, from the snow-covered ice-plains of the extreme north, where the Red-snow Alga alone remind us of the existence of vegetable organization, we turn toward the south, a girdle first expands before us, in which mosses and lichens clothe the soil, and a peculiar vegetation of low plants with subterranean, perennial stems, and generally large, handsome flowers, the so-called Alpine plants, gives a special character to Nature. Almost all the plants form little, flattened, separate tufts; _Pyrola_, _Andromeda_, _Pedicularis_, _Cochlearia_, poppies, crow-foots, and others are the characteristic genera of this flora, in which no tree, no shrub flourishes. Leaving this region, which botanists call the region of Mosses and Saxifrages, or, after one of the founders of Geographical Botany, Wahlenberg’s region, we go southward, and at first we see little low bushes of birches, then more compacted woods, into which the pines and other coniferous trees assemble, and we at last find ourselves in a second great zone of vegetation which is characterized by the woods consisting almost exclusively of conifers, which thus impress a peculiar character upon the flora; firs and pines, Siberian stone-pines and larches form great widely extended masses of forest; by brooks and on damp soil occur the willow and the alder. On dry hills grow the reindeer lichen and Iceland moss. In the cranberry, cloud-berry, and the currant Nature gives spontaneously, though sparingly, food; and a rich flora of variegated flowers serves for the decoration of the zone, which stretches, in Scandinavia, to the northern limit of the cultivation of wheat, but in Russia and Asia, almost to Kazan and Yakutsk; we will call it the zone of the conifers. Even in the neighborhood of Drontheim, the culture of fruits begins, though sparingly; soon appears the sturdy oak, called, with rather too much poetic license, “the German”; in Schoonen, Zealand, Schleswig, and Holstein flourish the first woods of beech. In about the latitude of Frankfort-on-the-Main, another tree joins company, which, in its bold, picturesque mode of branching, takes its stand beside the oak--which in the beauty of its foliage, as well as the utility of its fruit, it far surpasses--namely, the noble chestnut. The Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Caucasus form the southern limit of the zone, in the more eastern portion of which the lime and the elm contribute so abundantly to the composition of the forests that the former even withstands the devastation which the Esthonians make in the manufacture of their shoes from its bass. In the hop, the ivy, and the clematis we find here the first representation of the tropical climbers. The smiling green of the meadows alternates with the gloomy shadows of the forests; and man has taken possession of the earth, restraining the wild vegetation to that absolutely needful for wood and hay, and rich crops reward his industry. We leave this