UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 153 



next to it, while here, there are not more than 

 four or five species, which you meet again and 

 again. Nor did I omit to mention how beauti- 

 fully they are ornamented, by twining and para- 

 site plants, and yet not rendered impassable ; for 

 I repeated what I had heard a gentleman at Rio 

 say, that such is the regularity of those great 

 forests, that he could gallop for miles through 

 them, without being stopped by underwood. 



Both she and her sister were very much inter- 

 ested in the account I gave of the silk cotton 

 trees, which spread out all their branches at 

 such a height from the ground ; and of the lecy- 

 this, with its pitcher-shaped fruit, and of the 

 jacaranda, with its large feathered leaves of dark 

 green, which make such a contrast with its gold- 

 coloured flowers, some species of it so very tall 

 and magnificent, and others with such singular 

 tufts of whitish leaves at the ends of the 

 branches. 



They encouraged me to go on, and after de- 

 scribing how the dark tops of the Chilian fir 

 mingle with all these other trees, I came to the 

 humbler shrubs and flowers, which exhibit such 

 a wonderful variety of tints, and then to the 

 festoons of those twining plants, called liancs, 

 which descend from the tops of the highest trees, 

 or twist round the strongest trunks, till they 

 gradually kill them. 



Though many trees grow to great size here, 



