NOTES ON TREE PLANTING AT SAN JORGE, URUGUAY. 221 
very numerous ; the most valuable being coronillo (Scutia buai- 
folia), molle (Duvaua dependens), ‘‘vivaré,” guayavo (Letjoa 
Sellowiana), and willow (Salia Humboldtiana). There are 
other kinds that seem to be useless except for firing; and the 
“mataojo” (kill-eye) (Lucuma Sellowti) is not even useful for 
that, so pungent is its smoke. When the water in a stream 
begins to be fairly permanent, the Sarandi shrub (Cephalanthus 
Sarandi) is to be found, interspersed a little farther down with 
mataojos, willows, molles, possibly some ceibos (E£rythrina 
Crista-galli) or laurels (Oreodaphne acutifolia); and as the 
stream gains in width, so does the belt of trees on the banks, 
until it reaches the main water-course, which for the San Jorge 
district is the Rio Negro. But the last thirty years have seen 
many streams, formerly well wooded, denuded of their trees; and 
even in the woods of the Rio Negro, that vary from two or three 
hundred yards to, in some parts, more than a thousand yards in 
width, the felling of wood, in season and out of season, has been 
carried on so recklessly that the best qualities of wood are now 
becoming very scarce, and all wood sensibly diminished in 
quantity. There are parts of the Rio Negro where the banks are 
not wooded, but these are few and far between; and they occur 
where the banks are high, and are never overflowed, even when 
the river is swollen with excessive rain, A small stream some- 
times collects the rainfall from a large district, and is promptly 
converted by heavy rain into an impassable furious flood, over- 
flowing its banks to a very great width in some places, and 
sometimes covering the tops of all but the highest willows ; these 
streams run into each other, and eventually the Rio Negro 
receives them all, and its stream is enormously multiplied ; what 
might in ordinary weather be a stream of 80 to 200 yards width, 
after heavy rain becomes in some parts a river 4 miles broad or 
even more. ‘This periodical, or rather occasional, inundation 
leaves much debris of vegetable matter among the woods on the 
banks ; and the trees, though many of them are entirely sub- 
merged for a period of from two or three days to perhaps as 
many weeks, do not seem to suffer at all. Nor do they appear 
to suffer when, as has happened, more than two years have 
elapsed without any flood. Grassy glades exist here and there 
among these natural woods of the Rio Negro, and cattle come in 
to browse, but do not appear to do serious harm even to the 
young plants, that follow the path of the woodcutter’s axe, 
