Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/173

 *[Footnote: or through more than 95 degrees of latitude; Podocarpus and Ephedra extend almost as far. In Cupuliferæ, the species of oak which we are accustomed to regard as a northern form do not indeed pass beyond the equator in South America, but in the Indian Archipelago they re-appear in the southern hemisphere in the Island of Java. To the southern hemisphere belong exclusively ten genera of Coniferæ, of which I will name here only the principal: Araucaria, Dammara (Agathis Sal.), Frenela (with eighteen New Holland species), Dacrydium and Lybocedrus, which is found both in New Zealand and at the Straits of Magellan. New Zealand has one species of the genus Dammara (D. australis) and no Araucaria. In New Holland in singular contrast the case is opposite.

Among tree vegetation, it is in the form of needle-trees that Nature presents to us the greatest extension in length (longitudinal axis): I say among tree vegetation, because, as we have already remarked, among oceanic Algæ, Macrocystis pyrifera, which is found between the coast of California and 68° S. lat., often attains from 370 to 400 (about 400 to 430 Eng.) feet in length. Of Coniferæ, (setting aside the six Araucarias of Brazil, Chili, New Holland, Norfolk Island, and New Caledonia), the loftiest are those which belong to the northern temperate zone. As in the family of Palms we found the most gigantic, the Ceroxylon andicola, above 180 French (192 English) feet high, in the temperate mountain climate of the Andes, so the loftiest Coniferæ belong, in the northern hemisphere, to the temperate north-west coast of America and to the Rocky Mountains]*