Schomburgk's Account of Roraima. 307 



parrots announce the break of day by their hoarse cries, 

 for every morning at the same hour they move from the 

 upper woods to the lower places, and after having spent 

 the day there they return just as regularly and as punc- 

 tuallv to their roosting places a short time before sunset. 

 LlNNE suggested a floral clock, but the tropics possess an 

 animal clock of far greater precision and reliability. 

 Amon^ the insefls the curicus Prionus cervicornus and 

 a number of fine Buprestes occurred. 



The scantier my zoological coIle6lion proved to be, 

 the richer I found the flora. On the heights of the 

 neighbouring mountain, the rivulets were mostly covered 

 with the most charming floral specimens. Their summits 

 and slopes displayed throughout a many-coloured sand- 

 stone of very brittle substance, ranged partly in hori- 

 zontal layers,, some having an inclination from South to 

 East. In the riversheds also horizontal layers of a 

 gravel-like, firm red sandstone occurred, underlying a 

 mass of jasper pebbles of all sizes and colours ; even the 

 red jasper which I had seen on the Rue-imeru fall was 

 among them. I counted seven different colours, besides 

 a beautiful kind with variegated bands, the colouring of 

 which is exaftly the same as the Siberian jasper, in 

 consequence of which it was taken for the latter on our 

 return back. In the savannah stray pieces of a green 

 jasper as big as the fist were lying about which were 

 used as flint by the Indians and eagerly gathered by the 

 Macusis. The savannah itself was crossed by wide 

 layers of clay with a rich admixture of gravel earth, jasper 

 and feldspath. 



The abundant and fairy-land like wealth of vegetation 

 and the wildly romantic mountain masses, often formed 



