i6o NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



the founder of Santiago, held a conference with the 

 native Indian chiefs, in which they agreed to allow 

 the strangers a certain territory for settlement. It is 

 undoubtedly very ancient, and is divided nearly from 

 the ground into a number of massive branches spread- 

 ing in all directions, so as to form a hemisphere of 

 dark green foliage rather more than sixty feet in 

 diameter. The tree belongs to the laurel family 

 [Cryptocarya Peumus of botanists), and is densely 

 covered with thick evergreen leaves impenetrable to 

 the sun. The red oval fruits are much appreciated 

 by the country people, but they have a resinous taste 

 unpalatable to strangers. 



In the garden of the Franciscan convent we saw a 

 very fine old Lombardy poplar, from which it is said 

 that all those cultivated in Chili are descended. The 

 story runs that a prior of the convent, who visited his 

 brethren at Mendoza, some time in the seventeenth 

 century, found there poplar trees introduced from 

 Europe, and which in that denuded region were the 

 sole representatives of arboreal vegetation. The 

 sapling which he carried back on his return across 

 the Andes grew to be the tree which still flourishes in 

 the convent at Santiago. To judge from its appear- 

 ance, the story is no way improbable. 



In the patio of a fine house in the city are two 

 remarkably fine specimens of the Eucalyptus globulus, 

 a tree now familiar to visitors at Nice and many other 

 places in the Mediterranean region. It has been of 

 late extensively planted throughout the drier parts 

 of temperate South America, and promises to be of 

 much economic value. The pair which I saw here 



