6 REPORT ON TWO BOTANICAL COLLECTIONS FROM 
The endemic genera of the Coast Andes are Euosmia and Caracasia. Euosmia, Humb. 
& Bonpl., belongs to the Rubiaces, and was found by Humboldt and Bonpland in the 
mountains of Caripe ; it is a little obscure and needs re-examination. Caracasia, Szyszy. 
(Fargasia, Ernst) is a genus of the Maregravies, with two species found near Caracas ; 
it is nearly related to the genus Ruyschia, found in the West Indies and from Guiana 
to Peru. 
Following the list of endemic genera on p. 7 are three lists to be considered together. 
All are of genera represented in the tierra fria of the Andes: the first contains seven 
found on Roraima, throughout the Andes to Chili, and in South Brazil; the second 
contains fourteen found on Roraima and in the Northern Andes, but reaching neither 
Chili nor the mountains of South Brazil; the third list contains thirteen found in the 
Andes, which have passed along the Coast Andes to Niaguata or the Silla of Caracas*, 
but have not yet been found on Roraima. 
These lists illustrate two points:—in the first place, they indicate how the Coast 
Andes belong essentially to the Andes proper,—and the community of genera extends 
to species in Cinchona, Acena, Cardamine, and Berberis; in the second place, that 
Roraima and the mountains of South Brazil only have in common among woody plants 
montane genera so widely Andine as to pass from Colombia to Chili. One is then led to 
suspect that the mountains near Rio de Janeiro obtained their Andine shrubby genera 
from the south-west, and that in their case the plains of Matto Grosso have been a very 
similar barrier to immigration as the wooded hills on the west of the Casiquiare have 
been to the Parime mountains. 
Six more genera are named in a last list; they are common to Roraima and to the 
mountains of South Brazil, without reaching Chili; but they all descend to low levels in 
the Province of Alto Amazonas, and obviously are not montane in a restricted sense. 
Other genera which cannot be regarded as truly montane, contribute montane forms ` 
to the flora of Roraima. The most notable of these is Abolboda, of which genus 
A. Sceptrum is by far the largest species. 
Saxofredericia regalis is, like Abolboda Sceptrwn, the largest of its genus. Lisianthus 
Elizabethe and another species collected under this name by Appun are among the 
largest-flowered of these gentians; and Utricularia Humboldtii so impressed Sir Robert 
Schomburgk by its showy blossoms as to cause him to name the place where he first saw 
it the El Dorado Swamp, after the treasure-city Raleigh and others sought in Guiana. 
im Thurn has suggested a resemblance between the floras of Roraima and the 
Brazilian mountains (Trans. Linn. Soc., ser. II. Bot. ii. (1887), p. 257), but the similarities 
he notes are much more due to similarities of climate than to any evidently intimate 
relationship between them in times past. 
A very rough estimate of the number of genera of Spermatophyta in the flora of 
British Guiana places the total at 1070. The orders most strongly represented 
are :—Leguminose 86, Orchidacez 66, Rubiaceze 54, Composite 44, Graminez 43, 
Euphorbiacee 31, and Melastomaceze 25. On Roraima above 5000 feet, the order 
* Ernst in Journ. Bot. x. 1872, p. 261; in Bull. Soc. Bot. France, xxii. Rev. Bibl. p. 239; in ‘Idea general de la 
Flora de Venezuela’ in * Estudios sobre la Flora y Fauna de Venezuela’ (Caracas, 1877), pp. 212-235 ; and elsewhere. 
WS "Tree: "T'SI 
