Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/108

 *[Footnote: in the present state of the organic life of our globe, we may yet attempt an approximate method by which we may find some probable "lowest limits" or numerical minima. Since 1815, I have sought, in arithmetical considerations relating to the geography of plants, to examine first the ratios which the number of species in the different natural families bear to the entire mass of the phænogamous vegetation in countries where the latter is sufficiently well known. Robert Brown, the greatest botanist among our cotemporaries, had previously determined the numerical proportions of the leading divisions of the vegetable kingdom; of Acotyledons (Agamæ, Cryptogamic or cellular plants) to Cotyledons (Phanerogamic or vascular plants), and of Monocotyledonous (Endogenous) to Dicotyledonous (Exogenous) plants. He finds the ratio of Monocotyledons to Dicotyledons in the tropical zone as 1 : 5, and in the cold zones of the parallels of 60° N. and 55° S. latitude, as 1 : 2-1/2. (Robert Brown, General Remarks on the Botany of Terra Australis, in Flinders' Voyage, vol. ii. p. 338.) The absolute number of species in the three leading divisions of the vegetable kingdom are compared together in that work according to the method there laid down. I was the first to pass from these leading divisions to the divisions of the several families, and to consider the ratio which the number of species of each family bears to the entire mass of phænogamous plants belonging to a zone of the earth's surface. (Compare my memoir entitled "De distributione geographica Plantarum secundum cœli temperiem et altitudinem montium, 1817, p. 24-44; and the farther development of the subject of these numerical]*