146 RELATION BETWEEN CLIMATE AND VEGETATION 



saponaria, Patagonula sp. n., growing gregariously, and form- 

 ing large forests; an evergreen Zizyphus, growing solitary in 

 the campos, and giving shade both to the traveller and to the 

 cattle, which graze there in large herds ; a fine new species of 

 Triplaris, the trees which bear the female flowers being conspi- 

 cuous at a great distance, from tlie large pink-coloured calycine 

 segments ; Licania rigida, Benth., a low wide-spreading tree, 

 also solitary in the open campos, and revered by the traveller for 

 its shade. J\Iost of the shrubs were out of flower, a 3Iim.osa or 

 two and a fine Comhretum being all I met with. In a few small 

 lakes which we passed surrounded by Carnahuha Palms, I found 

 a Limnanthemum with white flowers, and a large yellow-flowered 

 Utriculariu. 



Ico is a fine town for the inland parts of Brazil ; but the 

 country around it was so completely dried up, and so completely 

 a desert, that during several walks I took into the country I did 

 not meet with more than half-a-dozen plants in flower. One of 

 these was, however, a very interesting one, a species of Lycopo- 

 dium, nearly allied to the bell-shaped species brought from the 

 west coast of America, but which opens out when put into water 

 for some time. The species from Ico has not yet been described. 

 It grows in open parts of the Catimja forests, and in the dry 

 season is scarcely to be seen, from the fronds being rolled closely 

 over each other, the old withered ones being the outermost ; but 

 as soon as a shower of rain falls the absorption of moisture causes 

 them to expand, and the ground is then one slieet of green. The 

 species of Lycopodium which roll themselves up in this manner 

 do not lie on the surface of the ground, to be blown about as the 

 wind listeth, as an Edinburgh botanist in a notice of them has 

 stated, but are so firmly fixed in the soil by their numerous 

 fibrous roots, that it is with no little force they are rooted 

 up. Having been informed at Ico that I should find the country 

 in the neighbourhood of Crato, another town about 100 miles to 

 the south-west, well adapted for my pursuits, as the vegetation 

 there remains verdant all the year round, from its greater eleva- 

 tion, and from the existence of several small streams which flow 

 from a mountain range that exists there — on my journey to that 

 place I passed through a country which differs remarkably from 

 that which lies between Aracaty and Ico, both in its physical 

 ap[)earance and the nature of its vegetation. The former is of a 

 hilly, undulating character, exhibiting none of those large open 

 plains which are met with nearer the coast, but, on the contrary, 

 it is all wooded with small trees and shrubs, nearly the wliole of 

 which are deciduous. As it was in the beginning of the dry 

 season when I started from Ico, there was scarcely a leaf to be 

 seen, a circumstance which, to a botanist particularly, makes a 



