384 HE VIEWS. 



BALLS FLORA OF THE PERUVIAN ANDES. 



The personal observations and the collections upon which 

 this essay 1 was founded were made in April, 1882, in an 

 excursion by railway from Lima up to Chicla, which although 

 only seventy-five miles in distance, is at the elevation of 12,220 

 English feet. Much to bis surprise, Mr. Ball found that at 

 this elevation he had not yet reached the alpine region, which 

 really begins about 2000 feet higher. This is three or four 

 thousand feet higher than Grisebach had placed it, on the 

 authority of Tschudi and Humboldt ; yet is only what we 

 should expect, since the proper alpine vegetation of the Rocky 

 Mountains in lat. 40° N. hardly descends below 10,000 feet, 

 and the oscillations of temperature in the Peruvian Andes are 

 small. 



Equally mistaken, Mr. Ball suspects, must be the common 

 view that the flora of the tropical Andes is scanty in species 

 as compared with high-mountain floras in general. He makes 

 some comparisons from which he infers that the paucity is 

 apparent rather than real, and may be attributed mainly to 

 the paucity of collections in the Andes, since these vast re- 

 gions have been visited at very few points and far between. 



About a quarter of the Andean pha?nogams is of Com- 

 positce, which is double their ratio in North America, which 

 again is greater than that of any other continent. The char- 

 acteristic and the most abundant Andean Compositce are the 

 Mutisiacece. Mr. Ball, referring to Bentham's indication of 

 the complex affinities of this group, ventm^es " to believe that 

 under Mutisiacece are included very many different lines of 

 descent, but that among them there are some minor groups 

 distinguished by very high relative antiquity." And in 

 another connection he opines " that the arguments that have 

 led some distinguished botanists to consider the great family 



1 Contributions to the Flora of the Peruvian Andes, with Remarks on the 

 History and Origin of the Andean Flora. By John Ball ; Journal Linnsean 

 Society, xxii. London, 1885. (American Journal of Science and Arts, 

 3 ser., xxxi. 231.) 



