dendron
of our European Alps.

"Even when nature does not produce the same species in analogous climates,
either in the plains of isothermal parallels, or on table-lands the
temperature of which resembles that of places nearer the poles, we still
remark a striking resemblance of appearance and physiognomy in the
vegetation of the most distant countries. This phenomenon is one of the
most curious in the history of organic forms. I say the history; for in
vain would reason forbid man to form hypotheses on the origin of things: he
is not the less tormented with these insoluble problems of the distribution
of beings."

15. Insoluble--yes, assuredly, poor little beaten phantasms of palpitating
clay that we are--and who asked us to solve it? Even this Humboldt,
quiet-hearted and modest watcher of the ways of Heaven, in the real make of
him, came at last to be so far puffed up by his vain science in declining
years that he must needs write a Kosmos of things in the Universe,
forsooth, as if he knew all about them! when he was not able meanwhile,
(and does not seem even to have desired the ability,) to put the slightest
Kosmos into his own 'Personal Narrative'; but leaves one to gather what one
wants out of {216} its wild growth; or rather, to wash or winnow what may
be useful out of its debris, without any vestige either of reference or
index; and I must look for these fragmentary sketches of heath and grass
through chapter after chapter about the races of the Indian and religion of
the Spaniard,--these also of great intrinsic value, but made useless to the
general reader by interspersed experiment on the drifts of the wind and the
depths of the sea.

16. But one more fragment out of a note (vol. iii., p. 494) I must give,
with reference to an order of the Rhododendrons as yet wholly unknown to
me.

"The name of vine tree, 'uvas camaronas' (Shrimp grapes?) is given in the
Andes to plants of the genus Thibaudia on account of their _large succulent
fruit_. Thus the ancient botanists give the name of Bear's vine, 'Uva
Ursi,' and vine of Mount Ida, 'Vitis Idea,' to an Arbutus and Myrtillus
which belong, like the Thibaudiae, to the family of the Ericineae."

Now, though I have one entire bookcase and half of another, and a large
cabinet besides, or about fifteen feet square of books on botany beside me
here, and a quantity more at Oxford, I have no means whatever, in all the
heap, of finding out what a Thibaudia is like. Loudo