41 



habit, naturally supposing that these wee things must be different 

 in species from plants that I had seen elsewhere only as tall and 

 robust when in flower. A little more experience, however, con- 

 vinced me that these Liliputians were merely taking time by the 

 forelock. 



Still another adaptation, excited apparently by the conditions 

 under which they exist, is the extraordinary number of seeds 

 formed by many plants and scattered over the soil in which they 

 grow. This habit is not confined to species which usually yield 

 great numbers of seeds, but seems common to all the desert flora. 

 Thus a little violet which seldom attains a height of three inches, 

 common about Caldera, often exhibits from thirty to forty pods 

 full of seeds upon a single plant. When one looks down upon it, 

 he can see only a mass of yellow flowers and fruit pods. I might 

 mention many other plants in which the same peculiarity is 

 noticeable. 



One other apparent adaptation deserves mention. It is said 

 that a majority of the desert plants are shrubs, or at least, are 

 suffruticose, and this accords with my own observation. I found 

 that such growths are in the habit of shedding their leaves in the 

 summer instead of winter, thus reversing the ordinary process of 

 nature. By this means they reduce their vital expenditure to a 

 minimum at a season when they need to husband their utmost 

 strength in order to resist long and continued dryness. This leaves 

 them free to exert their full powers at a period when they are 

 most likely to imbibe the revivifying moisture. Aided in this by 

 their thick, long and knotty roots and close, non-evaporating 

 bark, these shrubs, which seem to be nothing but dead stocks in 

 the summer, can withstand even several years of drought. 



After premising this much concerning the locality and the 

 flora in general, I will give some account of my own explorations 

 in the Desert of Atacama. It was my good fortune to reach 

 Caldera, the sea-port of Copiapo, in the month of September 

 last, which is early spring time in that latitude. It also happened 

 to be a year when this rare flora had sprung up, a thing which 

 I understood from residents had not occurred for several years 

 previously. A single rain had fallen in the month of June, and 

 at the time of my visit the plants were in full bloom. Had the 



