Botany of the Andes. 99 



day and night. The twilight at Quito lasts only ari hour 

 and a half; on the coast it is still shorter. Nor is there 

 any " harvest moon," the satellite rising with nearly equal 

 intervals of forty-eight minutes. 



From the stars we step down to the floral kingdom on 

 the Andes, using as our ladder of descent the following 

 sentence from Humboldt, at the age of seventy-five : " If I 

 might be allowed to abandon myself to the recollections of 

 my own distant travels, I would instance among the most 

 striking scenes of nature the calm sublimity of a tropical 

 night, when the stars — not sparkling, as in our Northern 

 skies — shed their soft and planetary light over the gently 

 heaving ocean ; or I would recall the deep valleys of the 

 Cordilleras, where the tall and slender palms pierce the 

 leafy veil around them, and wave on high their feathery 

 and arrow-like branches." 



Father Velasco praises Ecuador as " the noblest portion 

 of the New World." Nature has doubtless gifted it with 

 capabilities unsurpassed by those of any other country. Sit- 

 uated on the equinoctial line, and embracing within its lim- 

 its some of the highest as well as lowest dry land on the 

 globe, it presents every grade of climate, from the perpet- 

 ual summer on the coast and in the Orient to the everlast- 

 ing winter of the Andean summits, while the high plateau 

 between the Cordilleras enjoys an eternal spring. The veg- 

 etable productions are consequently most varied and pro- 

 lific. Tropical, temperate, and arctic fruits and flowers are 

 here found in profusion, or could be successfully cultivated. 

 As the Ecuadorian sees all the constellations of the firma- 

 ment, so Nature surrounds him with representatives of ev- 

 ery family of plants. There are places w^here the eye may 

 embrace an entire zone, for it may look up to a barle^^-field 

 and potato-patch, and down to the sugar-cane and pine- 

 apple. 



