408 Bibliographical Notice. 
draws our attention to natural phenomena, striking, interesting, or 
picturesque. Before starting for Mexico the author and his friend, 
Mr. Christy, were at Havana for a time. A journey by railway 
across Cuba took them through the thick tropical jungle of Indian 
fig-trees, acacias, mimosas, the seiba, the mahagua*, and other trees, 
with epiphytes and binding creepers, bamboos in the swamps, and 
tufted palms on the higher grounds, 
The Isle of Pines, with its densely wooded creeks, once the resort 
of pirates, is now the fashionable watering-place of the Cubans, and 
is a settlement for the free blacks of Florida, who chose to leave that 
country when it was given up to the United States. In the middle 
of the island are marble-quarries, not much worked now. Leaving 
the quarries, our tourists, riding over the wide savannahs, were able 
to recognize the sudden transitions from the tropical jungles of the 
streams to the palms of the slopes and the pine-trees of the hill-tops, 
for which this island is remarkable (pp. 6 and 7). 
The characteristic natural features of the tierra caliente, tierra 
templada, and tierra fria, on the road from Vera Cruz to Mexico, 
are vividly sketched, and the geographical and geological conditions 
on which they are dependent are succinctly described (pp. 27 and 
28). 
ji visit to the silver-mines at Real del Monte affords much inter- 
esting matter, in Chapter IV., both as to the country and the people. 
“The plateau of Atotonilco el Grande, called for shortness ‘ Grande,’ 
is, like most of the high plains of Mexico, composed mostly of por- 
phyry and obsidian—a valley filled up with débris from the surround- 
ing mountains, which are all volcanic, embedded in reddish earth. 
The mountain torrents, in which the water, so to speak, comes down 
all at once—not flowing in a steady stream all the year round as in 
England—have left evidences of their immense power in the ravines 
with which the sides of the hills, from their very tops downward, 
are fluted. These fluted mountain-ridges resemble the ‘ Kamms’ ~ 
(combs) of the Swiss Alps, called so from their toothed appearance” 
(pp. 84 and 85). 
The market at Grande (page 88) gave the author a good opportu- 
nity of studying people and things. Amongst other observations, he — 
says, “I never so thoroughly realized before how climate is altered 
by altitude above the sea, as in noticing the fruits and vegetables that 
were being sold at this little market, within fifteen or twenty miles of 
which they were all grown. There were wheat, and barley, and the 
pifouls (the fruit of the stone-pine, which grows in Italy, and is 
largely used instead of almonds) ; and from these representatives of 
temperate climates the list extended to bananas and zapotes, grown at 
the bottom of the great barrancas, 3000 or 4000 feet lower in level 
* “ The mahagua tree,” says the author, “ furnishes that curious fibrous net- 
work which is known as ‘ bast,’ and used to wrap bundles of cigars in. The ma- 
hogany-tree is called ‘ caobo ’ in Spanish—apparently the original Indian name, as 
the Spaniards probably first became acquainted with it in Cuba. Is our ‘ maho- 
gany ’ the result of a confusion of words, and corrupted from ‘ mahagua?’ ”— 
Page 2. ; 
wae 
