58 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XXXVI, 



atmosphere of the tableland. Condensation ensues and in consequence the 

 rainfall here, and in the valley immediately below, is doubtless unusually 

 high. 



Evidently for this reason, the forest of the Temperate Zone at El Piiion 

 is more luxuriant than we have found it elsewhere, while the floor and 

 where circumstances permitted, the side's of the valley below were clothed 

 with heavy, subtropical forest broken only by artificial clearings until one 

 reached a point some 1500 feet above Fusugasuga. From this point down- 

 ward the forest has been cleared and replaced by the coffee plantations which 

 surround the town of Fusugasuga. 



Our nearest collecting station to El Piiion was El Roble, a posada 1000 

 feet lower down on the trail to Fusugasuga. Nowhere in Colombia have 

 we found so great a faunal change in so short a distance as that which occurs 

 between these two points. Indeed one has to go only a few hundred feet 

 below El Piiion to pass from the Temperate, completely into the Subtropical 

 Zone. So steep is the trail that one seems to be descending a flight of stairs. 

 Within a dozen steps the rolling ground of the dividing ridge is lost to view, 

 and one is at once protected from the chill winds of the tableland. Very 

 quickly a striking change is observed in the vegetation as the larger, more 

 open-limbed, liane-draped trees of the Subtropical Zone replace the smaller, 

 thickly branched, moss-covered ones of the Temperate Zone. 



About 1200 feet below El Roble, we collected at a way-side posada known 

 as Aguadita. The valley is here somewhat wider, but the heavy subtropi- 

 cal forest, essentially like that found at El Roble, and broken only by occa- 

 sional clearings, still prevails. 



A short distance below Aguadita the primeval forest ends and the coffee 

 plantations begin and continue to and beyond Fusugasuga. While climati- 

 cally in the Subtropical Zone, the clearing away of the original forest-growth 

 has permitted a number of species characteristic of the semi-arid Tropical 

 Zone of the Magdalena Valley to extend their range up the mountai n slope. 

 Examples are Mimus, Tanagra cana and 1\ palmarum. Our party was 

 stationed only a day or two at Fusugasuga, collections being made from this 

 point in the forests 1500 feet above the city. 



Expedition No. 8. — The Antioquia Region. November, 191 4- March 26, 1916. 



Personnel. — Leo E. Miller; Howarth Boyle. 



Itinerary. — Miller and Boyle reached Medellin via the Magdalena 

 River to Puerto Berrio, November 11, 1914. After establishing their base 

 in this city they proceeded at once to Sta. Elena, one of Salmon's most 

 important collecting stations, on the summit of the first ridge of the Central 



