NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



is well known,* the ordinary estimate found in physical 

 treatises, resulting chiefly from the observations of 

 Humboldt, would give for Equatorial America a fall 

 of 1° Fahr. for about 328 English feet of increased 

 altitude, or 1° Cent, for 180 metres. This rate of 

 decrease would give a fall of 366° Fahr. in ascending 

 from Lima to Chicla, whereas, as we have seen, the 

 difference is probably little more than one-third, cer- 

 tainly less than one-half, of that amount. It is, there- 

 fore, with some astonishment that the stranger, arriving 

 in this region of the Cordillera, finds himself amidst 

 a vegetation characteristic of the Temperate zone.t 

 and that many of the most conspicuous species are 

 such as in mid-Europe require the protection of a 

 greenhouse. Amongst the more attractive and charac- 

 teristic of the Andean flora, I may mention five species 

 of Calceolaria, Alonsoa, two fine Loasacem (one with 

 large deep orange flowers and stiff hairs that penetrate 

 the gloves, the other a climber with yellow flowers), 

 several bushy Solanacece, and a beautiful clematis, 

 which may hereafter adorn European gardens. 



Along with many types of vegetation peculiar to 

 the Andes, or more or less widely diffused throughout 

 the Western continent, it was very interesting to a 



* See Appendix A, On the Fall of Temperature in ascending to 

 Heights above the Sea-level. 



t It is a curious illustration of the utterly untrustworthy character of 

 statements made by unscientific travellers to read the following passage 

 in a book published by a recent traveller in South America, who visited 

 Chicla in November, the beginning of summer. He declares that the 

 fringe of green vegetation "dwindles and withers at a height of nine 

 or ten thousand feet ; . . . while on the upper grounds, where sometimes 

 rain is plentiful, the air is too keen and cold for even the most dwarfish 

 and stunted vegetation to thrive." 



