Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/107

 *[Footnote: de la Sierra, and all the countries between the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, the Amazons, and Puruz),—of Africa, Madagascar, Borneo, and Central and Eastern Asia,—the thought rises involuntarily in the mind that we may not yet know the third, or probably even the fifth part of the plants existing on the earth! Drège has collected 7092 species of phænogamous plants in South Africa alone. {See Meyer's pflanzen geographische Documente, S. 5 and 12.) He believes that the Flora of that district consists of more than 11000 phænogamous species, while on a surface of equal area (12000 German, or 192000 English square geographical miles) von Koch has described in Germany or Switzerland 3300, and Decandolle in France 3645 species of phænogamous plants. I would also recall that even now new Genera, (some even consisting of tall forest trees), are being discovered in the small West Indian Islands which have been visited by Europeans for three centuries, and in the vicinity of large commercial towns. These considerations, which I propose to develop in further detail at the close of the present annotation, make it probable that the actual number of species exceeds that spoken of in the old myth of the Zend-Avesta, which says that "the Primeval Creating Power called forth from the blood of the sacred bull 120000 different forms of plants!"

If, then, we cannot look for any direct scientific solution of the question of how many forms of the vegetable kingdom,—including leafless Cryptogamia (water Algæ, funguses, and lichens), Characeæ, liver-worts, mosses, Marsilaceæ, Lycopodiaceæ, and ferns,—exist on the dry land and in the ocean]*