A REPORT ON TWO BOTANICAL COLLECTIONS FROM 
All this sandstone area belongs to the oldest land of South America: against the edge 
of it the Andes were heaped up—newer land which grew to its present form in the 
tertiary period, and formed a link of high ground round the head of the then existing 
Amazon valley. 
It is significant to us that the chief mountain-systems of South America outside 
the Andes reach very similar heights and similarly stand more or less parallel to the 
nearest coast, whence the trade-winds bring an abundance of rain. These mountain- 
systems are three: (1) the Coast Andes of Venezuela, of direct eruptive origin, but 
continued eastward from Caracas in the lesser sandstone mountains of Caripe; (2) the 
Parime mountains with Roraima at the eastern end and Duida at the western end ; 
and (3) the mountains of South Brazil formed of schists tipped at a high angle. 
Heights * north of the Equator. 
Coast Andes. Parime Mountains. 
POMS EE 9125 feet. Borama. soon oo ie 8740 feet. 
"Su UE Caracas useless Ge: M. y Duda 1. cnin i 8278 ,, 
Tamaya ..... EE 8052 ,, [Peaks near Duida estimated at 10,000 feet. | 
Heights * in South Brazil. 
SAAB NEA E 8999 feet. ZEND RG as 5960 feet 
Organ Mountains......... 6609 ,, and more. | Serra da Piedada 5... cios 50874 ,, 
Serra da Caraga ......... 6411 ,, | Iescolum. ooo cuelga 5760 ,, 
Unlike in geological structure the three systems are unlike as well in their relation 
to the Andes. The Casiquiare, by uniting the Orinoco and Amazon, encircles the Parime 
mountains, and the undulating country of little elevation to the west of it effectually 
separates this system from the Andes; the plains of Matto Grosso, &c., wherein rise 
within a few miles of each other the Paraguay and Madeira, to flow the one north, the 
other south, separate the Brazilian mountains and the Andes; but the Venezuelan coast- 
range is most intimately bound to the Andes proper through the Cordillera of Merida. 
Spanish settlers in the New World soon came to recognize a belt on the mountains of 
the tropies suited to their needs and for the growth of their food-plants. They called it 
the temperate land —* tierra templada,"—and the range of its mean annual temperature 
may be set down as 15-20 C. (59-77? F.). Above the “ tierra templada ” is the “ tierra 
fria," below it the “ tierra caliente." 
The limits of these belts depend on exposure. In the Venezuelan mountains, according 
to Sievers (' Venezuela,’ p. 26), the “ tierra fria " extends from about 7200 feet upwards ; 
among the Great Andes it sometimes commences as high as 10,000 feet; on Roraima 
T The heights of the Coast Andes are taken from Sievers’s * Venezuela’ (Hamburg, 1888), pp. 277, 278; those 
of Duida and neighbouring peaks from Sir Robert Schomburgk’s narrative in Proc. Roy. Geogr. Soc. x. 
1840, p. 245; and those of the Brazilian mountains, Itambe excepted, from Liais, ‘Climats, Géologie, Faune 
et Géographie botanique du Brésil’ (Paris, 1872), pp. 45-49. Most astounding are the erroneous statements 
published regarding the altitudes of the Brazilian mountains; for instance, the Serra dos Pyrenaos, ddliiinted 
previously to reach 9700 feet, proves to be no more than 4543 feet (Cruls, * Relatorio da Commisáo exploradora,' Rio, 
1894, p. 26). 
SS eee, 
