256 МЕ. Е. Е. ТМ THURN ON THE PLANTS 
present, in most remarkable degree, the appearance of the well-marked designs laid out by 
a landscape-gardener; the whole effect is like that of an artificial garden, with regular 
groups of shrubs separated by wide paths and roads of clean bare rock. Moreover, it is 
not only in the fissures that plants grow on this savannah. As on the eppellings, so here 
too, a certain number of plants find sufficient foothold in the vegetable accumulations in 
the slight depressions in the conglomerate sheet before these have,been engraved deeply 
enough to leave the sandstone exposed and to make regular fissures. 
But not only is the arrangement of the vegetation of the savannah thus very remarkable; 
the plants composing this vegetation are also individually of great interest. As might 
be expected, very few of them occur in the forest which everywhere, and for a great dis- 
tance, surrounds this strange open space. Much more remarkable is it that very few of 
these plants occur on the nearest savannah, nor, indeed, on the general savannah-land of 
the interior. And, most noteworthy of all is it, a very large number of these peculiar 
plants of this isolated savannah occur, often with slight but interesting differences, on 
Roraima. 
By far the most striking, as it is also the most abundant, plant on the Kaieteur savannah 
is a huge aloe-like Bromeliaceous plant, Brocchinia cordylinoides, Baker, which was 
gathered there by Mr. Jenman and myself some years ago, but which was, until the Roraima 
expedition, unknown elsewhere. This gigantic plant, so striking as to compel notice 
even from the most unobservant traveller, is ranged in enormous numbers on the Kaie- 
teur savannah, and indeed makes, to a large extent, the strangeness of that strange scene. 
There the height of a full-grown specimen, under favourable circumstances, is about 14 
feet, and, in the older specimens at least, the crown of leaves is supported on a tall bare 
stem. It seems also there to flower abundantly. We shall see that Ше plant occurs, but 
with slightly different characters, on Roraima. Moreover, at the Kaieteur, in the axils 
of the leaves of this Brocchinia, and only in that position, grows a very remarkable and 
beautiful Utricularia ( U. Humboldtii, Schombk.), with flower-stems 3 or 4 feet long, sup- 
porting its many splendidly large violet flowers. This plant too we found on Roraima, 
and with slightly different characters from those which it exhibits at the Kaieteur. 
Another remarkable and distinct plant on the Kaieteur savannah is a low-growing 
Brocchinia (B. reducta, Baker), also previously known only from there, and may be 
roughly described as resembling three or four sheets of yellowish-grey foolscap paper rolled 
loosely one round the other, the whole standing on one end of the roll. This plant I did 
not observe on Roraima, though I feel convinced that it will one day be found there ; but 
I did see it, in very considerable quantity, in one small district about halfway between the 
Kaieteur and Roraima. Only one other plant common, but with a difference of form, 
to the two districts can be mentioned here. Mr. Jenman found at the Kaieteur a very 
striking new Moronobea (M. Jenmani, Engl.); and I found on Roraima another very 
remarkable congener (M. intermedia, Engl., No. 337), of which its describer says that it 
is intermediate between М. riparia and М. Jenmani. 
In short, the Kaieteur savannah and Roraima may be regarded as two isolated areas 
marked by a very peculiar vegetation, which vegetation is, however, to a noteworthy 
extent, common to the two. 
