Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/202

 *[Footnote: so are Willows, the different species of Pines, and Oaks, no less widely disseminated: the latter (oaks) being always alike in their fruit, though much diversified in the forms of their leaves. In Willows, the similarity of the foliage, of the ramification, and of the whole physiognomic appearance, in the most different climates, is unusually great,—almost greater than even in Coniferæ. In the southern part of the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere the number of species of willows decreases considerably, yet (according to the Flora atlantica of Desfontaines) Tunis has still a species of its own resembling Salix caprea; and Egypt reckons, according to Forskäl, five species, from the catkins of whose male flowers a medicine much employed in the East, Moie chalaf (aqua salicis) is obtained by distillation. The Willow which I saw in the Canaries is also, according to Leopold von Buch and Christian Smith, a peculiar species, common however to that group and to the Island of Madeira,—S. canariensis. Wallich's Catalogue of the plants of Nepaul and of the Himalaya cites from the Indian sub-tropical zone thirteen species, partly described by Don, Roxburgh, and Lindley. Japan has its indigenous willows, one of which, S. japonica (Thunb.) is also found as a mountain plant in Nepaul.

Previous to my expedition, the Indian Salix tetrasperma was the only known intertropical species, so far as I am aware. We collected seven new species, three of which were from the elevated plains of Mexico, and were found to extend to an elevation of 8000 (about 8500 English) feet above the level of the sea. At still greater elevations,—for example, on the mountain plains situated between 12000]*