1899 ] VEGETATION QF TROPICAL AMERICA 3 
772,900 square kilometers, we find not even two-thirds as many 
species. Yet these countries have both forest and meadow, 
heath and shore, rocks and moorland; in short a much more 
varied vegetation than the 150 square kilometers around Lagoa 
Santa, that are almost entirely covered with campos and forest. 
I may give some other numbers; for example, the number 
of specimens of trees, small and large. The forests around 
Lagoa Santa seem especially to follow the watercourses. In 
every valley runs a brook, or a creek, or a river, on its way 
to Rio des Velhas. The forests form a border of variable 
breadth to these streams. They advance up the rather rugged 
terrain until the hills become too dry for them and the vegeta- 
tion of the campos conquers them. Suddenly, then, the forests 
are succeeded by campos, that unbrokenly cover all the tops of 
the hills and all elevated ridges. The predominant feature of 
the country is the campos, or what the Spaniards would call 
savannas ; flowery grassland that, where the red clay soil is 
deep and rather free of stones, also bears scattered trees, and 
has the likeness of a park or a garden with fruit trees; for the 
trees of the campos have not the straight and high trunks that 
are peculiar to the trees of the forests. On the contrary, they 
are like our fruit trees, low, with crooked stems and branches, 
and broad, open crowns, through which the sun’s rays unhin- 
dered reach the grassy ground beneath. It must be noticed that 
where the campos are most vigorous the trees are able to form 
groups that have almost the aspect of groves or small forests. 
The campos and the forest vegetation are two quite different 
formations, both in a biological and in a floristic way. The spe- 
cies of the forest are quite different from those of the campos, 
with the exception of a very few. Do we not find a second 
proot of the curious richness of species in the tropics in the fact 
that in the campos of Lagoa Santa not less than ninety species are 
to be found, and in the forest about four hundred? Of course the 
trees are growing intermixed. Several times I had an excellent 
opportunity for studying the composition of the forests. When 
a Brazilian farmer lays out a plantation, he cuts down a piece of 
