Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/181

 *[Footnote: geographical latitude. I would recall the limits, in respect to elevation, of the birch and the common fir in a part of the Swiss Alps, on the Grimsel. The fir (Pinus sylvestris) extends to 5940, and the birch (Betula alba) to 6480 French (6330 and 6906 English) feet; above the birches there is a higher line of Pinus cembra, whose upper limit is 6890 (7343 English) feet. Here, therefore, we have the birch intervening between two zones of Coniferæ. According to the excellent observations of Leopold Von Buch, and the recent ones of Martins, who also visited Spitzbergen, the following geographical limits were found in Lapland:—Pinus sylvestris extends to 70°; Betula alba to 70° 40´; and Betula nana quite up to 71°; Pinus cembra is altogether wanting in Lapland. (Compare Unger über den Einfluss des Bodens auf die Vertheilung der Gewächse, S. 200; Lindblom, Adnot. in geographicam plantarum intra Sueciam distributionem, p. 89; Martins, in the Annales des Sciences naturelles, T. xviii. 1842, p. 195).

If the length and arrangement of the needle-shaped leaves go far to determine the physiognomic character of Coniferæ, this character is still more influenced by the specific differences in the breadth of the needles, and the degree of development of the parenchyma of the appendicular organs. Several species of Ephedra may be called almost leafless; but in Taxus, Araucaria, Dammara (Agathis), and the Salisburia adiantifolia of Smith (Gingko biloba, Linn.), the surfaces of the leaves become gradually broader. I have here placed the genera in morphological succession. The specific names first chosen by botanists]*