248 POPULAR GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



with nothing but " bare, grassy hills, a few small woods 

 only existing in the hollows/' and everything our eye 

 rested on would be "burnt up from the want of rain." 

 In some parts of the interior of Brazil this is more or less 

 the character of the country at all times ; and owing to a 

 deficiency of moisture, the vegetation we meet with in cross- 

 ing the mountain-ridges (called serras), though of an in- 

 teresting character, has nothing of the luxuriance which 

 surrounded us on the Organ Mountains. 



In ascending these serras we find the rough red-coloured 

 soil thinly covered with a few bushes of the Composite 

 family, a Baccharis, or a Lycnophora. Lycnopliora Mar- 

 tiana has immensely thick woolly stalks, which are sur- 

 mounted at the top by a great ball of leaves. 



On the grassless stony surface of the ground we find 

 numerous species of Orchis, (among them "a beautiful 

 Lalia, with yellow flowers/') a very prickly, procumbent 

 species of Cactus also, and (crowding the rocky parts of the 

 serra) numerous large water-bearing Tillandsias from which 

 we may quench our thirst, as " the base of the leaves con- 

 tains a large quantity of water, an ordinary sized plant 

 yielding about a pint/' 



On the top of these serras, sometimes at the height of 



