366 SOUTH AMEEICA— THE ANDES EEGIONS. 



winds prevail regularly during the fine season preceding the rains, and espe- 

 cially in July and August. With November begins the wet season, which lasts 

 throughout the austral summer, or at least till the end of February. May, June 

 and July are the cold months, though the change is less felt in the more equable 

 climate of Lake Titicaca, thanks to the moderating influence of its waters. Hail 

 falls usually at the beginning and the end of the wet season, and is much dreaded 

 especially by the wine-growers in the south-eastern district of Cinti. 



According to the Jesuit missionary, Bernabé Cobo, who lived in the middle of 

 the seventeenth century, thunder prevails mostly in the region of the Andes about 

 the sources of the Amazons and Plate E,iver affluents. Here is situated the city 

 of Chuquisaca, which is " every year struck several times by lightning." The 

 Yungas district at the foot of the Andes, whose steep escarpments are exposed to 

 the moisture-bearing clouds^ receives copious downpours throughout the whole 

 year. This abundance of humidity combined with the high temperature develops 

 an exuberant growth of every product of the vegetable kingdom.* 



Floka. 



The marvellous richness of the flora of Bolivia is due to the fact that this 

 is the central region of the South American continent, where are intermingled 

 the Andean and Brazilian zones, as well as numerous forms characteristic of 

 the Amazonian and Plate basins. Here also all the plants of the Old World 

 are acclimatised with the greatest ease, provided care be taken to select districts 

 with corresponding climates. Timber suitable for building purposes, cabinet and 

 dye woods, fibrous and medicinal plants, all ai'e found in superabundance, and 

 the great variety of plant life explains the industry of the so-called itinerant 

 " botanists," native quacks who traverse every part of South America, retailing all 

 kinds of nostrums. 



In the Yungas region there are woodlands even more dense and leafy than 

 those of the Brazilian seaboard, and nowhere else do the lands under tillage yield 

 more abundant or finer harvests. In the eastern zone, where the Andean flora 

 disappears, replaced by that of Bolivia proper, forests and savannas, locally called 

 pajonales, are diversely intermingled. But the clearings are gradually reduced in 

 number and extent in the direction of the mountains, and at the foot of the 

 Cordillera the woods are continuous. 



In the hot lands, palms are represented by numerous species, which supply the 

 natives with food, drink, clothes, habitations and various implements. Some 

 members of this family are even found penetrating into the temperate lands, and 

 the variety known to botanists by the name of cntcrpe andicola grows on the 

 steepest slopes of the Cochabamba range almost in immediate proximity to the line 



* Mean temperature of some Bolivian towns : — 



