Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/129

 *[Footnote: *lieving that we are now acquainted with half the phænogamous plants on the globe, and if we took the number of known species only at one or other of the before-mentioned numbers of 160000 or 213000, we should still have to take the number of grasses (the general proportion of which appears to be 1/12), in the first case at least at 26000, and in the second case at 35000 different species, which would give respectively in the two cases only either 1/8 or 1/10 part as known.

The assumption that we already know half the existing species of phænogamous plants is farther opposed by the following considerations. Several thousand species of Monocotyledons and Dycotyledons, and among them tall trees,—(I refer here to my own Expedition),—have been discovered in regions, considerable portions of which had been previously examined by distinguished botanists. The portions of the great continents which have never even been trodden by botanical observers considerably exceed in area those which have been traversed by such travellers, even in a superficial manner. The greatest variety of phænogamous vegetation, i. e. the greatest number of species on a given area, is found between the tropics, and in the sub-tropical zones. This last-mentioned consideration renders it so much the more important to remember how almost entirely unacquainted we are, on the New Continent, north of the equator, with the Floras of Oaxaca, Yucatan, Guatimala, Nicaragua, the Isthmus of Panama, Choco, Antioquia, and the Provincia de los Pastos;—and south of the equator, with the Floras of the vast]*