48 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 



was sometimes sensible enough, but I could not 

 take my thermometer in my excursions to the 

 highest points. . . . 



I have been much interested to meet here 

 several tribes of plants which I had not seen since 

 leaving England. I have got, for instance, a 

 Poppy, a Horsetail, a Bramble, a Sanicle (exceed- 

 ingly like your common wood Sanicle), some shrubs 

 of the Bilberry tribe with edible fruit similar to 

 that of the English species, a Buttercup (very like 

 the minute Ranunculus hederaceus which grows by 

 Ganthorpe Spring), a Hydrocotyle rather smaller 

 than the Hydrocotyle vulgaris whose round shining 

 leaves you must have noticed in boggy parts of 

 Welburn Moor, a Chaffweed like the minute 

 Centunculus minimus which grows rarely on Stock- 

 ton Common, and some others. In a deep dell on 

 the way to Moyobamba I was delighted to find a 

 few specimens of that rare plant the Chickweed : 

 its seeds had most likely been brought in the dung 

 of mules which travel that way. . . . 



[The following letter now takes up the narrative 

 from the point of view of the botanical collector : ] 



To Mr. George Bent-ham 



TARAPOTO, PERU, Dec. 25, 1855. 



... I did not get away from Yurimaguas till 

 the 1 2th of June, and on the 2ist reached the end 

 of my long voyage. Yurimaguas has the most 

 equable temperature I have anywhere experienced, 

 the thermometer sometimes not varying more than 

 8 in twenty-four hours, but I have found no place 

 so relaxing, and the addition of a severe attack of 



