314 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1936 



contrary to the custom in Europe, the chase was not begun early in the 

 morning because of the darkness and the denseness of the jungle and 

 so, while waiting for breakfast and the completion of preparations for 

 the hunt, he took several men and set forth to cut down some wax 

 palms. Two palms were finally felled. "I measured one of them : It 

 Avas 60 meters in length, its circumference at the base was 1 meter 24 

 centimeters, and near the summit, 65 centimeters, a remarkable ex- 

 ample of graceful pi-oportion for so great a height." This palm which 

 he actually measured was, then, 196.8 feet tall, the diameter being 15.5 

 inches at the base and 8.2 inches near the top of the trunk. (He writes 

 elsewhere that it attains from 60 to 80 meters, that is, up to 262 feet 

 in height.) The interior of the trunk was white and pithy toward the 

 center, as is usual in palms, but the woody cylinder surrounding the 

 pith was extremely hard. "The wood fibers, torn out by the violence 

 of the shock, stood up on the stump black, fine, and hard as dark 

 steel wires." "Between the shattered leaves * * * glaucous 

 above and white below, the fruiting branches 2 meters [6.5 feet] in 

 length, which had seemed so small to us from the ground, were 

 lying scattered and broken. The innumerable orange berries with a 

 sweet pulp, the size of Chasselas grapes, rolled all over the ground. 

 Many thousands were recovered to be sent to Europe, also some 

 leaves, spathes, and two cross sections of the trunk. From my 

 calculations, these trees were about 150 or 200 years old." 



He found that the wax palms on the eastern side of the Quindio 

 trail extended from Mediacion to La Ceja, being most abundant at 

 Las Cruces; the palmares "diminished from day to day" as the up- 

 per limit of their distribution was approached. This species ap- 

 parently gi'ows in a restricted area scarcely more than 9 to 12 miles 

 north and south of the trail, the altitudinal range being between 

 6,560 and 10,000 feet above sea level. Various small pahiis of other 

 genera, invariably associated with it at first, disappeared at the 

 higher elevations. Andre was surprised to find that the palms were 

 not in the midst of the oak belt, as Humboldt had reported, but be- 

 yond it on the eastern slope of the Quindio. After crossing the crest, 

 however, he discovered that the oaks ascended much higher on the 

 western slope and were there intermingled with wax palms. Andre 

 observes: "These reasons make me believe that Humboldt has con- 

 fused the true Ceroxylon andicola^ that of Las Cruces, with another 

 species, smaller, and still little known {C. ferruginemn) . It is char- 

 acterized by the rough surface of its berries, and it abounds in the 

 Andes, principally on the west of the Central Cordilleras and al- 

 most into the Republic of Ecuador." (L'Amerique fiquinoxiale, 

 p. 101, 1879.) It is unfortunate that Andre did not describe this 

 species, to which he gave a name, more fully, but there is every 

 reason to believe that his observations concerning a second species are 



