210 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 



ascending by the stream which runs through the 

 city. Jameson's house is about 150 yards lower 

 down, and poor Hall lived on the opposite side of 

 the stream. Dr. Jameson is, however, at the present 

 moment in Guayaquil. ... I had the pleasure of 

 spending a day with him in Ambato, on his way 

 down. He is a tall ruddy Scot, and although on 

 the shady side of sixty years, may very well reach 

 a hundred and fifty, for he shows no signs; of age 

 yet. People who are naturally robust and live 

 temperately do reach very advanced age in these 

 mountains. Our countryman Dr. Jervis died lately 

 at Cuenca, aged a hundred and fifteen years ; and 

 here is Mr. Cope, turned of eighty -five, trotting 

 about as nimbly as a young man. . . . 



The weather is extraordinarily dry just no\v, for Quito, and 

 vegetation is much burnt up. Before I put myself in the doctor's 

 hands I contrived to scramble some way up Pichincha, and to 

 gather a few mosses ; although I had already gathered the 

 greater part of what it produces in other parts of the Cordillera. 

 In my garden I have Brachymenium Jameson!, Tayl., Tortula 

 denticulata, Mitt., and some ether mosses, and there are many 

 more pretty things by the stream close at hand. When I- came 

 out on the Cordillera last year, one of the first mosses I recog- 

 nised was the curious Orthotricheid moss, Streptopogon crythro- 

 dontits, Wils., which grows perched on twigs in bushy places, just 

 as Orthotrichum affini and striatum do in England. Another 

 of my first findings was your Didymodon gracilis, Bridel. 

 Grimmia Icngirostris, Hook., I have gathered abundantly on 

 Chimborazo, the original locality. I have little difficulty in recog- 

 nising your and Humboldt's mosses, but many of Taylor's I 

 cannot satisfactorily identify. Besides the incomplete analysis, 

 there is a laxness in the use of terms relating to form in his de- 

 scriptions which makes me almost in every case feel uncertain 

 whether I have got his plant or not. I have three claimants for 

 his Nickcra gmcillimti (Pichincha), and as I find that only one of 

 them grows on Pichincha, I have no doubt of its being the species 

 intended, though it is the one least like his description of the 

 three. 



I am glad that Mr. Mitten is working up the Indian mosses, 

 as I hope we shall thus be able to ascertain whether it be really 



