Caldas's barometric-botanical levellings: a plan to give every plant an altitude (Quito, 1801)

In a memoir addressed to Mutis and printed among the unpublished pieces of the 1849 Paris edition of the Semanario, Francisco José de Caldas proposed cutting the vegetated part of the earth into twelve zones one barometric inch wide and assigning each plant its zones, so that a flora would say not "habita en Quito" but "á tantas toesas de elevacion sobre el mar". The same letter calls the Indians of Yaruquí lazy barbarians. Both are quoted here.