262 MR. Е. Е. IM THURN ON THE PLANTS 
usual savannah plants. Conspicuous among these were three orchids, two growing on 
bare pebble-covered ground, the third on the huge boulders scattered over the slope. The 
two former were Cyrtopodiwm parviflorum, Lindl. | Хо. 55], with its handsome spike, 
often eighteen inches high, of many yellow and purple flowers, and the delicately beautiful 
white-flowered Kellensteinia Kelineriana, Reichb. f. [No. 61], which latter grows also on 
the Kaieteur savannah. The third of the above-mentioned orchids was the curious Masda- 
vallia brevis, Reichb. Г. (No. 286], with flowers more remarkable than beautiful. Another 
striking new plant also growing on the boulders of this part of the slope was a remarkably 
handsome and large Puya (?) [No. 45], with flowers of a magnificently deep indigo-blue— 
a colour so rare in the tropics. This Риуа, Mr. Baker tells me, is probably a new and 
interesting species, but the dried specimens of it which I deposited at Kew are unfortu- 
nately not sufficient for its determination. I have, however, some fine young living plants 
of the species. 
I come now to the description of the El Dorado swamp, for the place is really so 
remarkable botanically as to be worthy of distinction under this name. It is worth, also, 
another effort to give some picture of the appearance of the place. "The swamp (botanists 
will understand that the rather dismal suggestions of this word are often, as certainly in 
this case, undeserved) lies on a terrace midway up the mountain. Its surface is very 
uneven, and it is consequently much wetter in some parts than in others—its flatter parts 
and its hollows so saturated with wet that the foot of one who walks there sinks often up 
to the ankle; its higher parts islands, rarely of any great size, of dry ground scattered 
through the swamp. Often from these dry islands considerable groups of rocks 
crop out and sometimes rise to a considerable height. In the wetter parts the grass, 
which, of course, forms the main vegetation, is everywhere high, rank, and coarse; on 
the islands of drier ground the grass is finer and even turf-like; from the actual rocks 
grass is absent. Each of these two aspects of the swamp, wet ground and dry rocky 
island, presents a distinct vegetation, of which almost the only common feature is dis- 
tinction from the vegetation outside this El Dorado. 
_ Mingling and vying in height with the rank grass* of the wet parts, their flowers 
mingling with the blossom of the grasses, are plants of wonderful beauty. The ever lovely 
violet-flowered Utricularia Humboldtii, Schombk. [No. 43], is there, growing, not, as on 
Ше Kaieteur savannah, as an epiphyte, but with independent roots in the ground; but of 
this I shall have more to say presently. The Abolboda is there too, in a form slightly 
larger and much less compact than is natural to it when growing on drier ground. The 
flag-leaved, yellow-flowered Xyris setigera, Oliver [No. 62], and the small pink-flowered 
Begonia tovarensis, Klotzsch [No. 141], are also there. A very few plants of Broc- 
chinia cordylinoides, Baker, just two or three single specimens, are there; but of this 
I shall have more to say presently. Various ferns are there, especially the magnificent 
Cycad-like Lomaria Boryana, Willd. (L. Schomburgkii, Klotzsch); also many orchids; 
a “lady's slipper” (Selenipedium Lindleyanum, Reichb. f. [No. 58)), with huge-branched 
flower-stems, each bearing many blooms, the whole plant, flower, leaf, and stem alike, all 
* The grasses chiefly noticed at this place were :— Paspalum stellatum, Flügge ; Panicum nervosum, Lam.; Arun- 
dinella brasiliensis, Raddi, 
