148 PROSERPINA. 



shrubs.* It would seem as if the liliaceous plants, mingled 

 with the gramma, assumed the place of the flowers of our 

 meadows. Their form is indeed striking ; they dazzle by the 

 variety and splendor of their colours ; but, too high above the 

 soil, they disturb that harmonious relation which exists among 

 the plants that compose our meadows and our turf. Nature 

 in her beneficence, has given the landscape under every zone 

 its peculiar type of beauty. 



" After proceeding four hours across the savannahs, we en- 

 tered into a little wood composed of shrubs and small trees, 

 which is called El Pejual ; no doubt because of the great 

 abundance of the 'Pejoa' (Gaultheria odorata,) a plant with 

 very odoriferous leaves. The steepness of the mountain be- 

 came less considerable, and we felt an indescribable pleasure 

 in examining the plants of this region. Nowhere, perhaps, 

 can be found collected together in so small a space of ground, 

 productions so beautiful, and so remarkable in regard to the 

 geography of plants. At the height of a thousand toises the 

 lofty savannahs of the hills terminate in a zone of shrubs, 

 which by their appearance, their tortuous branches, their stiff 

 leaves, and the dimensions and beauty of their purple flowers, 

 remind us of what is called in the Cordilleras of the Andes the 

 vegetation of the paramos^ and the punas. We find there the 

 family of the Alpine rhododendrons, the thibaudias, the au- 

 dromedas, the vacciniums, and those befarias J with resinous 

 leaves, which we have several times compared to the rhodo- 

 dendron of our European Alps. 



"Even when nature does not produce the same species in 

 analogous climates, either in the plains of isothermal parallels, 

 or on table-lands the temperature of which resembles that of 

 places nearer the poles, we still remark a striking resem- 



* I do not see what this can mean. Primroses and cowslips can't be- 

 come shrubs ; nor can violets, nor daisies, nor any other of our pet 

 meadow flowers. 



f 'Deserts.' Punas is not in my Spanish dictionary, and the refer- 

 ence to a former note is wrong in my edition of Humboldt, vol. iii. , p. 

 490. 



\ "The Alpine rose of equinoctial America," p. 453. 



