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their valleys rather shallow, but sometimes with quite steep 
banks, and in these arreyos many different trees and shrubs find 
congenial homes, among them the pinnate-leaved Manaca palm 
(Geonoma), and a beautiful tree-fern, the latter class unusual 
at such low altitudes; the streams occasionally broaden out into 
lagoons, in which fine water-lilies and the beautiful yellow- 
flowered floating heart (Nymphaeoides) abound; here also grow 
many interesting shrubs of the meadow-beauty family, so numer- 
ous in species in tropical America, represented in our own flora 
only by the genus Rhexia; low ferns in variety occur and among 
them a fine climbing one (Lygodium). 
The higher gravelly areas are characterized by the Caribbean 
pine, with an associated flora of much diversity, the Cuban oak, 
not specifically separable from the live oak of the southeastern 
United States, being the largest hardwood tree of these soils. 
The slopes, swales and savannas are marked by two highly 
interesting palms, one the barrigona, or bottle-palm (Colpothri- 
leaved (Paurotis), with spiny leaf-stalks, and a low cylindric 
trunk covered with their persistent bases, and in this association 
shrubs and herbaceous plants differing from those of the pine- 
lands abound. The royal palm (Roystonea regia), the grandest 
palm of the West Indies, is locally abundant, as nearly through- 
out Cuba, on various soils, and with it grow many low plants not 
observed in the other associations mentioned. 
On August 31 we travelled northeast by wagon from Herradura 
to San Diego de los Bajios, situated in the foot-hills of the moun- 
tains and famous for its sulphur-water baths, and studied the 
flora of the craggy limestone hills, the wooded valleys and pine- 
clad slopes until September 3. The flora of the limestone hills 
and mountains is abruptly and almost totally different from that 
of the plain. The most striking tree is the mountain palm 
(Gaussia), a slender species anchored in the rough limerock by 
many coarse fiber-like roots, the trunk bulged near the middle 
somewhat like that of Colpothrinax, but pinnate-leaved and re- 
markably slender below and above the bulge. On steep cliffs, 
