262 MR. E. F. 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 Oyrtopodium parviflorum, Lindl. [No. 55], with its handsome spike, 

 often eighteen inches high, of many yellow and purple flowers, and the delicately beautiful 

 white-flowered Kcellenstelnki Kellneriana, Eeichb. 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. f. [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 Tiuja (?) [No. 45], with flowers of a magnificently deep indigo-blue — 

 a colour so rare in the tropics. This Puya, 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, audit 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 TJtricularia Humboldtii, Schombk. [No. 43], is there, growing, not, as on 

 the 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 setirjera, 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. Schomburgk'd, Klotzsch) ; also many orchids ; 

 a "lady's slipper" (Selenipedium Mndleyanum, Pteichb. f. [No. 53]), 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 stdlatum, Fliigge ; Panicum nervorum, Lara.; Arun- 

 flinella brusUiensis, ltaddi. 



