the eastward of the north Cape again, it is plentiful throughout Lapland, to the Sea of Archangel; but does not cross the longitude of the Ural mountains; thence to the sea of Okhotsk, that is all over the Siberian plains, it is replaced by the Lathy rus pisiformis[1], L. (fide Ledebour), but re-appears to the extreme east of the continent of Asia, in Okhotsk and Kamschatka, affording another of those singular features in the Siberian Flora to which I have alluded in the note at p. 211 of this volume. In North America, commencing on the west coast, it is to be found at the Oregon[2] river in 46°, and north to Kotzebue's Sound under the Arctic circle ; in central North America, it attains the same latitude and that of the Arctic Ocean, besides following the great rivers up to their sources in those inland seas, Lake Erie, &c, Upon the east coast of America it extends from New York no further north than Labrador, in latitude 55°; a limit upwards of 11 degrees nearer the tropic than what it attains in Europe, eastern Asia, or western America. Lastly, in South America it re-appears in the latitude of 47°, or nearly that of the Oregon.
The geographical distribution of Lalhyrus maritimus naturally leads to that of the vast and important natural family to which it belongs ; but in the present case I shall confine my remarks on this subject to the tribe Papilionacece, which alone extends into the frigid regions of the northern hemisphere. The prevalence of this group, to the almost total exclusion of the Mimosea, Swartzieæ, and Casalpineæ, in all latitudes north of the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, of the Caspian and Altai range in Asia, and of latitude 37° north, in the New World; or, in general terms, to the northward of the parallel of 40°; is an obvious fact: for the Papilionaceæ constitute a large proportion of the flowering plants from those limits up to the everlasting ice of the Polar Ocean. In the opposite hemisphere, however, a wholly different state of things prevails with that tribe. In South Australia and Tasmania the Mimosect rival the Papilionacea in abundance. In New Zealand only five species of the Natural Order are found in the whole extent of the Islands, from 36° to 46° south, and none beyond, in Lord Auckland's group and Campbell's Island; whilst in Fuegia proper they are unknown. To the northward of the Strait of Magalhaens they commence, accompanied with the Mimosea. In both hemispheres the Order diminishes in the proportion of its species to those of Composites and Grammea, when proceeding beyond the temperate towards the frigid zone; in the northern
accompanying those Orders to 75° in America, or six degrees below the extreme limit of vegetation; while, in the southern regions of the old world, it disappears at 46°, and in those of the new at 52°, or twelve degrees short of the latitude which some other terrestrial plants attain.
- ↑ The accurate Gmelin says of this plant, "omni per Siberia occurrit." Ledebour assigns to it all middle and southern Russia, from the Caucasus to St. Petersburgh in Em-ope, and all Asia, lying between the Caspian and latitude 60° north, and east to the Baikal sea. This range is enormous, when we consider that Lathyrus pisiformis is not an inhabitant of any other part of the globe, nor a littoral plant; hence, though scattered over an area included between twenty degrees of latitude and 100 of longitude, it is, in comparison with the L. maritimus, a local species, and confined by tolerably well marked geographical limits, namely by the polar circle in Arctic Russia and Siberia, by the Caucasus, Caspian and Aral seas and the Altai range on the south, by the Gulf of Bothnia and the Carpathians on the west, and the mountains of eastern Siberia in the opposite quarter. On the other hand, the species with which I have compared it, acknowledges no fixed limits; in Europe it as evidently seeks the Ocean as the other avoids it, whilst in North America it crosses a whole continent. Gmeliu's fifth species of Lathjrus is very probably the L. maritimus, whose range he states to be from the river Aldan as far as Kamschatka, thus commencing where L. pisiformis terminates. His description tallies well with that plant.
- ↑ I exclude the Californian locality, for it is doubtful whether the plant of that country be the same as the European.
