1118. The social and antisocial habits of plants are among their most remarkable characteristics. Like animals, they live in two classes : the one class grows alone and scattered, as Solanum Dulcamara, Lychnis dioica, Polygonum Bistorta, Phalangium Liliago, &c. The other class unites in society, like ants or bees, covers immense surfaces, and excludes other species, such as Fragaria vesca, Faccinium Myrtillus, Polygonum aviculare, Aira, canescens, Pinus sylvestris, &c. Barton states that the Mitchella repens is the plant most extensively spread in North America, occupying all the ground between the 28ﾦ and 69ﾦ of north latitude. The A'rbutus U'va-ursi extends from New Jersey to the 72ﾦ of latitude. On the contrary, Gordonia, Franklinia, and Dionﾵ'a Muscipula, are found isolated in small spots. Associated plants are more common in the temperate zones than in the tropics, where vegetation is less uniform and more picturesque. In the temperate zones, the frequency of social plants, and the culture of man, has rendered the aspect of the country comparatively monotonous. Under the tropics, on the contrary, all sorts of forms are united ; thus cypresses and pines are found in the forests of the Andes of Quindia, and of Mexico ; and bananas, palms, and bamboos in the valleys. But green meadows and the season of spring are wanting in the south, for nature has reserved gifts for every region. 'The valleys of the Andes,' Humboldt observes, 'are ornamented with bananas and palms; on the mountains are found oaks, firs, berberries, alders, brambles, and a crowd of genera believed to belong only to countries of the north. Thus the inhabitant of the equinoctial regions views all the vegetable forms which nature has bestowed around him on the globe ; and earth developes to his eyes a spectacle as varied as the azure vault of heaven, which conceals none of its constellations.' The people of Europe do not enjoy the same advantage. The languishing plants, which, from a love of science, or from luxury, are cultivated in our hot-houses, present only a shadow of the majesty of equinoctial vegetation; but by the richness of our language, we paint those countries to the imagination, and individual man feels a happiness peculiar to civilisation.
