CENTRAL CHILE 169 



and by a gradual diminution of aridity passes to more 

 prosperous landscapes. 



Situated between a coastal range and a mountainous 

 background, the central valley of Chile is almost an 

 exact replica of the Sacramento valley of California, and, 

 like it, frankly mediterranean in character. The valley 

 itself has a grassy floor with a thorny brush, mostly ever- 

 green, of mimosas, colletias, &c., recalling the chaparral 

 and the maquis. It is now being thrown open to the 

 cultivation of mediterranean produce, thanks to irriga- 

 tion. Farther inland the slopes are clothed with a taller 

 woodland of hard- and small-leaf shrubs like quillaja, 

 saponaria, sumac, and escallonia, which strikingly 

 resemble evergreen oaks and other mediterranean ever- 

 greens. Above this belt of woods the evergreen beeches, 

 corresponding to ilexes, make their appearance in regular 

 forests. Araucarias replace the pines of California ; 

 tubers and bulbs are marked features of the vegetation. 



South Chilian Rain-forests. A little to the north of 

 Valdivia, by 36 S., begins the forest-region of Chile, 

 with the predominance of the austral moist, westerly 

 winds, which produce an equable, very rainy climate, 

 warm temperate in the north, cool in the south. The 

 whole country then becomes abundantly timbered up to 

 the tree-line. The lower belt represents a true temperate 

 mixed rain-forest, dark and dense, composed of several 

 evergreen small- and hard-leaf beeches mingled with 

 leaf-shedding trees of the same genus, a wealth of 

 climbers and epiphytes, bambus and tree-ferns, and of 

 smaller trees like the magnolaceous d/rvtwys Winteri and 

 several other kinds, among which are conifers. Above 

 5,000 feet the forest passes to the shrub- woodland of 

 dwarf deciduous beeches. This belt again gives way, 

 at about 6,000 feet, to a bush-land of barberry, cran- 



