252 MR. E. F. IM THURN ON THE PLANTS 



tract of alluvial soil which has heen deposited, having either been brought down by the 

 rivers or cast up from the sea, is virtually entirely occupied by the omnipresent forest of 

 trees, which have there attained their true gigantic tropical size. If we except certain 

 small patches of very swampy open land within this forest of the alluvial tract, locally 

 called "wet savannahs," all is forest except the very narrow strip of land actually 

 washed by the waves, and not even that toward the north. 



Very different and distinct floras characterize the parts of Guiana thus variously con- 

 ditioned, though, naturally, a certain number of species are common to all three. 



Where the narrow sea-washed strip has been artificially disafforested, a generally 

 dwarf and weed-like flora prevails, very rarely consisting of non-indigenous plants. 



Within the forest, after the generally great height of the trees and often the 

 abundance of palms, perhaps the most noteworthy features of the vegetation, are in the 

 first place, the great scarcity of mosses, herbage, and low-growing plants, especially of 

 any with conspicuous flowers, and the consequent barrenness of the soil, which is relieved 

 by only a few scattered ferns, ginger-worts, Caladiums and other aroids, Dieffenbachias, 

 Cyperacese, and other shade-loving plants ; and, in the next place (though this is hardly 

 discernible from below), the abundance of the flowering creepers and epiphytes spread 

 over the matted tops of the dense and lofty trees. The representatives of the low-growing 

 flowering plants of the thinner, lighter woods of temperate climates have here, in this 

 dense shade of the tropical forest, to send their immensely long, flowerless, creeping stems 

 up some one or even two hundred feet, to reach above the highest tree-branches, before 

 they can break into bloom. Only as semiaquatics along the river-side there are a few 

 showy-flowered dwarf plants. 



Quite different again is it on the savannahs, where, among the grasses which naturally 

 form the chief vegetation, are scattered a considerable number of bright-flowered dwarf 

 plants ; though even here the abundance of bloom very rarely reaches the extraordinary 

 development which it often does in the meadows of temperate climates. Rather striking, 

 too, is it that on these savannahs many of the bright-flowered plants, unlike those of tem- 

 perate meadows, are here also true climbing-plants, leguminous chiefly, and various 

 species of Eehites, though their stems, instead of climbing far and high over giant trees, 

 here only ramble weakly over the short grasses. 



In each of these distinct floras of the coast, the forest, and of the savannah, the 

 number of species is of course great ; but in each separate district the species charac- 

 teristic of it are, as a rule, remarkably widely and evenly scattered throughout its extent. 

 Por example, within the forest-district probably by far the larger number of species have 

 an unbroken distribution throughout its extent, and of the remaining species most have 

 an unbroken distribution throughout the district from north to south ; though they may 

 be limited from east to west, according, that is, to the greater or less distance from the 

 sea or to the higher or lower position on the general upward slope of the country. On 

 the savannah, the level of which probably corresponds more or less closely with the 

 general level of the main tableland of that part of the continent, the distribution of 

 the main species is still more even and universal. On almost every part of the savannah 



