146 
figs and oranges. In many places these hedges are being extir- 
pated, and replaced by wire fences. The wire used is not 
armed with the dangerous barbs so common in the United States. , 
The posts are either of imported timber or they are made of the 
trunks of the Nomdubay tree, one of the Leguminosez, which 
seems to have the same properties as our locusts (Robinia) when 
buried in the ground. 
One of my first tramps was to the eastward of the city in the 
direction of Punta Carretas. Not a tree or shrub was to be seen. 
The rich green sward was dotted by whitish clumps of thistles 
and the wild cardoon and bright patches of pink and yellow 
oxalis. Many of the flowers common in our gardens were here | 
growing indigenously—beautiful Verbenas, white and crimson 
Petunias, pretty purple Mallows and spiny Solanums with large 
conspicuous flowers. I collected a number of species of Szsyrin- 
chium, or blue-eyed grass, varying in height from two feet to 
delicate little plants of a few inches only, with almost microscopic 
flowers. These were especially interesting to me, as we have but 
one Sisyrinchium (S. angustifolium) in the northeastern United 
States. 
Among the other plants in the fields were large woolly- 
leaved Senecios, with conspicuous yellow flowers; a little Az- 
tennaria or Gnaphalium \ike the common _plantain-leaved 
“everlasting” of our fields; an indigenous clover with tiny 
leaves and loose heads of pretty tawny flowers, besides many 
species of Medicago, which have probably been introduced. 
Among the daisy-like composites were a dwarf Evigeron and a 
species of Anthemis with pretty white flowers, growing in large 
patches. It may be this plant which Darwin, in his Journal, 
says reminded him of the daisies of the English fields. 
The rocks of the sea coast were devoid of any vestiges of 
Alge. This, I think, may be explained by the great amount of 
mud held in suspension by the water, the irregularity of the tides, 
which frequently leave the rocks exposed for a long period of 
time, and the variability in the saltness of the water. 
In the sand of the beach I found a little African composite 
with fleshy leaves and small rayless heads of flowers, the Cotula 
-_coronopifolia, L., now so extensively spread throughout the world. 
