PALJEONTOLOGY. 285 



period. In the present condition of the world these genera 

 appear to exhibit no tendency whatever to occur associated 

 together. We have so accustomed ourselves, although erro- 

 neously, to regard coniferac as a northern form, that I experi- 

 enced a feeling of surprise when, in ascending from the shores 

 of the South Pacific towards Chilpansingo and the elevated 

 valleys of Mexico, between thf? Venta cle la Moxonera and the 

 Alto de los Caxones, 4000 feet above the level of the sea, I rode a 

 whole day through a dense wood of pinus occidentalis, where 

 I observed that these trees which are so similar to the Wey- 

 mouth pine, were associated with fan palms* ( Corypha dulcis\ 

 swarming with brightly-coloured parrots. South America 

 has oaks, but not a single species of pine ; and the first time 

 that I again saw the familiar form of a fir tree it was thus 

 associated with the strange appearance of the fau-palm.f 

 Christopher Columbus, in his first voyage of discovery, saw 

 coniferEe and palms growing together on the north-eastern 

 extremity of the island of Cuba, likewise within the tropics, 

 and scarcely above the level of the sea. This acute 

 observer, whom nothing escaped, mentions the fact in his 

 journal as a remarkable circumstance, and his friend Anghiera, 

 the secretary of Ferdinand the Catholic, remarks with asto- 

 nishment, " that palmeta and pineta are found associated 



This corypha is the soy ate, (in Aztec, zoyatl,) or the Palma dulce 

 of the natives ; see Humboldt and Bonpland, Synopsis Plant, jfflqui- 

 noct. Orbis Novi, t. i. p. 302. Professor Buschmann, who is profoundly 

 acquainted with the American languages, remarks, that the Palma 

 soyate is so named in Yepe's Vocabulario de la Lengua Othonri, and 

 that the Aztec word zoyatl (Molina, Vocabidario en Lengua Mexicans 

 y Castellana, p. 25,) recurs in names of places, such as, Zoyatitlan and 

 Zoyapanco, near Chiapa. 



t Near Baracoa and Cayos de Moya; see the Admiral's journal of 

 the 25th and 27th of November, 1492, and Humboldt, Examen critique 

 de I'Hist. de la Geographic du Nouveau Continent, t. ii. p. 252, and 

 t. iii. p. 23. Columbus, who invariably paid the most remarkable atten- 

 tion to all natural objects, was the first to observe the difference between 

 Podocarpus and Pinus. " I find." said he, " en la tierra aspera del 

 Cibao pinos que no llevan pinas (fir-cones), pero portal orden com- 

 puestos por naturaleza, que (los frutos) parecen azeytunas del Axarafe de 

 Sevilla." The great botanist, Richard, when he published his excellent 

 Memoir on Cycadeae and Coniferae, little imagined that before the time 

 of L'He"riticr, and even before the end of the fifteenth century, a navi- 

 gator had separated Podocarpua from the Abietiaese. 



