NOTES. CV 



and Barquisimeto, there to unite itself with the granitic coast-chain of Vene- 

 zuela, east of the Laguna de Macaraibo and west of Puerto Cabello. From the 

 Grita and the Paramo de Porquera, the Eastern Cordillera rises again to an ex- 

 traordinary height. There follow, between the parallels of 8 5' and 9 7', the 

 Sierra Nevada de Merida (Mucuchies), explored by Boussingault, and of which 

 Codazzi has assigned the height, by trigonometrical measurement, 15,165 feet, 

 and the four Paramos of Timotes, Niquitao, Bocond, and de las Kosas, full of the 

 most beautiful alpine plants. (Compare Codazzi, Kesumen de la Geografia de 

 Venezuela, 1841, p. 12 and 495 ; also rny Asie Centrale, on the height of per- 

 petual snow in this zone, t. iii. p. 258 262.) The western cordillera is en- 

 tirely without volcanic activity ; in the middle one it prevails up to Tolima and 

 the Paramo de Euiz, which, however, are almost three degrees of latitude from 

 the Volcan de Purace'. The eastern cordillera has near its eastern declivity, 

 at the origin of the Rio Fragua, north-east of Mocoa and south-east of Ti- 

 mana, a smoking hill : more distant from the shore of the Pacific than any other 

 still active volcano in the New Continent. An exact knowledge of the local 

 relations of the volcanoes to the ramifications of the mountain-chains is highly 

 important towards the completion of the geology of volcanoes. All older maps, 

 excepting that of the highland of Quito, are only calculated to mislead. 



( 403 ) p. 277. Pentland, in Mary Somerville's Phys. Geography, 1851, vol. i. 

 p. 185. The Peak of Vilcanoto (17,020 feet, in 14 28' lat ), a part of the 

 mass of mountains of that name, and directed east and west, forms the northern 

 extremity of the high plain in which the Lake of Titicaca, 88 miles long, appears 

 only a small inland sea 



( 404 ) p. 278. Compare Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Natural His- 

 tory and Geology during the Voyage of the "Beagle," 1845, p. 275, 291, and 

 310. 



( 405 ) p. 280. Junghuhn, Java, Bd. i. S. 79. 



( i 406 ) p. 280. Junghuhn, Java, Bd. iii. S. 155 ; and Goppert, die Tertiarflora 

 auf der Insel Java nach den Entdeckungen von Junghuhn (1854), S. 17. The 

 absence of monocotyledons is, however, only to be understood of the silicified 

 trunks of trees found on the surface and particularly in the rivers of the Ban- 

 tam district ; in the subterrannean coal-beds remains of palms are found, be- 

 longing to the two genera of Flabellaria and Amesoneuron. See Goppert, S. 31 

 and 35. 



(*") p. 281. On the signification of the word Mera, and the conjectures 

 communicated to me by Burnouf respecting its connection with Mera (a Sans- 

 crit word for sea), see my Asie Centrale, t. i. p. 114 116; and Lassen's In- 



