BOTANTCAL INFORMATION. 177 



rugose, brownish, painted with many darker zones, which are some- 

 times deeply impressed ; substance cinnamon-coloured. Stem nearly 

 3 inches high, -|- of an inch thick, compressed, straight, slightly uneven, 

 umber, pruinose, strongly dilated above. Hymenium concave, pale 

 brownish umber, distinctly defined all round the dilated apex of the 

 stem. Apices of tubes papular, with a central aperture. 



A very beautiful Fungus, allied to P. pallidus^ but with many dis- 

 tinct characters, 



{To he continued.) 



BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 



Mk. Spruce in Peru. 



By letters recently received from the enterprising botanist and travel- 

 ler Mr. Spruce, dated December 35, 1855, we find that he has reached 

 Tarapoto, on the Huallaj?a, in Peru. His immediately previous letters 

 were from Yurimaguas, " from which place," he writes, " I did not get 

 away till the end of June, and on the 21st reached the end of my long 

 voyage. Yurimaguas has the most' equable temperature I have any- 

 where experienced, the thermometer sometimes not varying more than 

 3° in twenty-four hours ; but I have found no place so relaxing, and 

 the addition of a severe attack of diarrhoea and catarrh had reduced me 

 pretty low when I left. Periodic returns of this diarrhoea and ulcerated 

 feet, caused by walking in the cold water of mountain streams, are the 

 chief inconveniences I have experienced at Tarapoto. In other respects 

 I am more agreeably placed than anywhere previously in my South 

 American wanderings. I am among magnificent scenery and an inter- 

 estino- ve'^etation, and there are a few pleasant people with whom to 



converse. The pampa, or plain, of Tarapoto is a sort of amphitheatre, 

 entirely surrounded by hills, and so large that London might be set 

 down on it ; its position is in the lower angle of the confluence of the 

 Mayo and Huallaga, and the town itself is about three leagues from 

 the latter river. The hiUs are an offshoot from the main ridge of the 

 Andes, and, from being watered by the Mayo and its trii)utaries, 

 I must call them, for want of a better name, the Mayensian Andes. 

 The ri(l<res rise to some 3000 fcot above the Pampa, and some 



VOL, VIII. 



2 A 



