286 RELATION BETWEEN CLIMATE AND VEGETATION 



No. 3. — The Vegetation of Bahia and Pernambuco. By 

 George Gardner, Esq., F.L.S., Director of the Royal Botanic 

 Garden, Ceylon. 



As the packet in which I took my passage from Rio to Per- 

 nambuco only remained two days at Bahia, my excursions did 

 not extend far beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the city. 

 The country is very flat compared with that around Rio, but the 

 soil is very much of the same nature. The vegetation is, how- 

 ever, rank and luxuriant. The shores are covered with large 

 plantations of Cocoa-nut trees, and the higher grounds are well 

 planted witii Mango, Jack, and other fruit trees, all of which 

 attain to a much greater size than they do at Rio. After visit- 

 ing a convent at the west end of the city, the nuns in which 

 make for sale artificial flowers from the feathers of birds, I hired 

 a boat to go up the bay a few miles on a botanical excursion. I 

 landed on a peninsula called Bom Fim, and set out with one of 

 the blacks to walk across it, a distance of about two miles. On 

 the shore I observed some plants of Sophora tometitosa, Arge- 

 mone mexicana, Eugenia Michelii, and a large spiny shrub 

 belonging to the natural order of Rhamnads. In a moist sandy 

 place in a marsh a little inland, Spennera aquatica and another 

 little Melastomaceous shrub grew very abundantly, as also 

 Sauvagesia erecta, and a pretty little Eriocaulon. In dryer 

 sandy places beyond this grew a very minute species of Erio- 

 caulon, and a pretty dwarf shrubby species of Cuphea {C.Jtava 

 Spreng.), with small leaves and bright yellow flowers. By the 

 road side Ampherephis aristata, Kunth — a very pretty species of 

 Composite, and the prickly fruited Aca?ithospermum hispidum, 

 D. C, were very common. In some small pools in a marshy 

 place under the sliade of some large palm-trees, I collected fine 

 specimens of the curious Pistia Stratiotes, both in flower and in 

 seed. It was floating on the surface of the water along with 

 Limnanthemum Humboldtianum. After reaching the shore 

 on the opposite side of the peninsula, I walked along it a 

 little way, but witliout finding any thing new. In muddy salt 

 marshes here, as on the shores at Rio, Rhizophora Mangle, 

 Avicennia tomentoxa, Lagnnctdaria racemosa, and Conocarptis 

 erectus, were very abundant, and the latter I had not met with 

 before in flower. We returned to the boat by a different road, 

 and I was glad that we did so, as otherwise I would have missed 

 one of the finest plants which my collection from this place 

 boasts of. This was the beautiful Angelonia hirta, Cham., 

 which I found but sparingly in a swampy place at the foot of a 

 hill on which a large church is situated. It produces long spikes 

 of light-blue flowers, and is not unlike another species {A. hi- 



