5 o NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



rock, where they issue from the hills. These 

 steep narrows are called pongos, and often include 

 falls and rapids. They are rich places for ferns, 

 but it is both difficult and dangerous getting along 

 them, now and then scrambling over large slippery 

 rocks which block up the passage, or wading up to 

 the middle through dark holes with the water 

 below 70. An exploration of one of these places 

 generally costs me a week's suffering in the feet. 

 I have at last got into a fern country, and I have 

 already gathered more species than in all my 

 Brazilian and Venezuelan travels. Mosses also are 

 more abundant, and there is a greater proportion of 

 large species. 



Among the flowers I believe you will find a good share of 

 novelty. I expect I have two new genera of Rubiaceae, both 

 very fine things, one of them allied to Calycophyllum but with 

 large flowers almost like those of Henriquezia. There are new 

 things also in several other tribes. The general character of the 

 vegetation is, as might be expected, intermediate between that of 

 the valley of the Amazon and of its alpine sources. As evidences 

 of an approach to cooler regions, and to a flora more European 

 in its affinities, I may mention having met here, for the first time 

 in my American travels, a Horsetail, a Poppy, a Bramble, a 

 Crosswort, and a Ranunculus (a minute species, trailing over moss 

 by mountain streams, and looking quite like a Hydrocotyle). 

 The ferns may possibly include some new species, especially 

 among the larger ones, which are likely enough to have been 

 passed over on account of their bulkiness. The fronds of one of 

 these are 22 feet in length, though it never shows more than a 

 rudimentary caudex : its affinity seems to be with Cyathea. In 

 my collection are a good many species of Grammitis, Meniscium, 

 Davallia, Diplazium, Litobrochia, Aneimia, etc., together with 

 several pretty SeJaginellas and an Adder's -tongue. A small 

 species of Grammitis growing on trees in the mountains is very 

 odoriferous when dry, and the Indian women put it in their hair, 

 calling it Asinima. 



These things have not been got together with- 

 out greater trouble than I had calculated on. I 

 expected to find roads on which I could take long 



