NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



is well known,* the ordinary estimate found in physical 

 treatises, resulting chiefly from the observations of 

 Humboldt, would give for Equatorial America a fall 

 of 1° Fahr. for about 328 English feet of increased 

 altitude, or 1° Cent, for 180 metres. This rate of 

 decrease would give a fall of 366° Fahr. in ascending 

 from Lima to Chicla, whereas, as we have seen, the 

 difference is probably little more than one-third, cer- 

 tainly less than one-half, of that amount. It is, there- 

 fore, with some astonishment that the stranger, arriving 

 in this region of the Cordillera, finds himself amidst 

 a vegetation characteristic of the Temperate zone,t 

 and that many of the most conspicuous species are 

 such as in mid-Europe require the protection of a 

 greenhouse. Amongst the more attractive and charac- 

 teristic of the Andean flora, I may mention five species 

 of Calceolaria, Alonsoa, two fine Loasacecs (one with 

 large deep orange flowers and stiff hairs that penetrate 

 the gloves, the other a climber with yellow flowers), 

 several bushy SolanacecE, and a beautiful clematis, 

 which may hereafter adorn European gardens. 

 X^Along with many types of vegetation peculiar to 

 the Andes, or more or less widely diffused throughout 

 the Western continent, it was very interesting to a 



* See Appendix A, On the Fall of Temperature in ascending to 

 Heights above the Sea-level. 



t It is a curious illustration of the utterly untrustworthy character of 

 statements made by unscientific travellers to read the following passage 

 in a book published by a recent traveller in South America, who visited 

 Chicla in November, the beginning of summer. He declares that the 

 fringe of green vegetation "dwindles and withers at a height of nine 

 or ten thousand feet ; . . . while on the upper grounds, where sometimes 

 rain is plentiful, the air is too keen and cold for even the most dwarfish 

 and stunted vegetation to thrive." 



