Ch. XIII.] PIXE FOEESTS. 237 



vals, not shouldering eacli other, as in the Atlantic forest, 

 where the trees crowd together, each trying to overtop 

 its neighbour. Xo lianas hang from the trees, and, ex- 

 cepting a few narrow-leaved Tillandsias, no epiphytes 

 nestle on the branches and trunks. Below, instead of 

 shrubby palms, large-leaved heliconias, and curious 

 melastoma9, the ground was bare and brown from the 

 fallen leaves of the pines, excepting that in some places 

 light grass had sprung up ; in others the common bracken 

 fern of Europe. All that I thought characteristic of a 

 tropical forest had disappeared ; and the whistling of the 

 wind through the pine-tops, which I had not heard for 

 years, carried me back in imagination amongst the 

 Canadian pine-forests. The road was rocky ; and to the 

 left rose mountains of nearly bare cliffs, up which clung 

 straggling pines, reaching to the summits, relieving, but 

 not concealing, their nakedness. Clumps of evergreen 

 oaks were the only other trees ; and these, like the 

 pines, grew in social groups on the hills. In the valleys, 

 the oaks and pines gave place to a variety of trees and 

 brushwood, different species of acacia being the most 

 abundant. Occasionally a tree-cactus appeared, its 

 curious flattened, kite-shaped joints, covered with 

 prickles, looking like great leaves, and its stem, formed of 

 the same, thickened at the bottom into a round filiform 

 trunk, not differing much from the trees around, but in. 

 the branches showing all the gradations by which the 

 flat constricted joints thicken out into stems. In some 

 parts, as we travelled on, we found the oak trees and 

 many of the pines completely draped with hanging fes- 

 toons of the grey moss-like Tillamhia usneoides, or " old 



O / 



man's beard." Not a bough but had a great fringe 



