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under favourable circumstances, they may overrun, as well 

 as the great probability of their having been the first 

 vegetable clothing of the earth. " The hill of calcareous 

 breccia, which we have just regarded as an island in the 

 ancient gulph, is covered with a thick forest of columnar 

 cactus and opuntia, some thirty or forty feet high, covered 

 with lichens, and divided into several branches in the form 

 of candelabras, wearing a singular appearance. Near Ma- 

 niquarez, at Punta Araya, we measured a cactus, the trunk 

 of which was four feet nine inches in circumference. The 

 European, acquainted only with the opuntia in our hot- 

 houses, is surprised to see the wood of this plant become so 

 hard from age, that it resists for centuries both air and 

 water, and that the Indians of Cumana employ it in pre- 

 ference for hords and doorposts. Cumana, Coro, the island 

 of Margaretta, and Curacao, are the places in South America 

 that abound most in the plants of the family of the nopals. 

 There, only, a botanist can compose a monography of the 

 genus cactus, the species of which vary not only in their 

 flowers and fruits, but in the form of their articulated stem, 

 the number of costae, and the disposition of the thorns : the 

 divisions of property are marked by hedges formed of the 

 agave and cactus. At San Fernando, S. A., the soil abounds 

 in aquatic plants with sagittate leaves, and he remarks that 

 some of these succulent plants are from eight to ten feet 

 high. In Europe their assemblage would be considered a 

 little wood." He also mentions a kind of bamboo which 

 the Indians call jagua, which is found near San Fernando, 

 more than forty feet in height. These, he observes, cannot 

 but remind the admirer of fossils of the vast fossil bamboos 

 which are found in the sandstones accompanying coal. 

 Speaking of a rock of considerable height and magnitude, 

 he observes, " Euphorbium, cacalia, kleinia, and cactus, 

 which are become wild in the Canary Islands, as well as in 

 the south of Europe and the whole continent of Africa, are 



