Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/216

 organs of reproduction; the second from the form of the parts which constitute the axes (i. e. the stems and branches), and the shape of the leaves, dependent principally on the distribution of the vascular fascicles. As, then, the axes and appendicular organs predominate by their volume and mass, they determine and strengthen the impression which we receive; they individualise the physiognomic character of the vegetable form and that of the landscape, or of the region in which any of the more strongly-marked and distinguished types severally occur. The law is here given by agreement and affinity in the marks taken from the vegetative, i. e. the nutritive organs. In all European colonies, the inhabitants have taken occasion, from resemblances of physiognomy (of "habitus," "facies"), to bestow the names of European forms upon tropical plants or trees bearing very different flowers and fruits from those from which the names were originally taken. Everywhere, in both hemispheres, northern settlers have thought they found Alders, Poplars, Apple- and Olive-trees. They have been misled in most cases by the form of the leaves and the direction of the branches. The illusion has been favoured by the cherished remembrance of the trees and plants of home, and thus European names have been handed down from generation to generation; and in the slave colonies there have been added to them denominations derived from Negro languages.

The contrast so often presented between a striking agreement of physiognomy and the greatest diversity in the inflorescence and fructification,—between the external aspect as determined by the appendicular or leaf-system, and the