April 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



NORTHERN PERU. 409 



the outer margin of the algarrobo belt, especially wherever the soil is 

 much impregnated with salt. The Zapote de perro bears a large berry, 

 not unlike a smallish melon in size, shape, and the alternating green 

 and white streaks. Its taste is disagreeable, and I have not seen it 

 touched by any animal, although it is said to be eaten by dogs (as its 

 name implies) and also by foxes and goats. The Vichaya, a dense- 

 growing bush, with oval hoary leaves, has yellow berries the size ,of a 

 damson, containing a few stony seeds involved in a mawkish sweet pulp. 

 Another Capparis, which scrambles up into the trees, also grows here, 

 but rarely ; it is much more frequent near Guayaquil, as is also the 

 Vichaya, which is there called Cuchuchu. In fact, all the trees and 

 shrubs hitherto mentioned (with one or two exceptions) grow also on 

 the desert coast of Ecuador, along with a few others not found in 

 Northern Peru. 



In the ravines which run from the tablaze to the valley, besides a 

 few stunted algarrobos, there is another small prickly tree, a species of 

 Cantua, with black stems and branches, which becomes clad with fuga- 

 cious roundish Loranthusdike leaves and pretty white flowers only iu 

 the rainy years. There also grows a cactus called Rabo de zorra (fox's 

 brush), from its usually simple stems being densely beset on the nume- 

 rous angles or strise with ieddishdike prickles. 



On the margin of the river, except where the banks are unusually 

 high, there is another strip of land, called the vega, which is overflowed 

 every year about February or March by the flush of water from the 

 Andes, although no rain may have fallen in the plain. The vega is in 

 many parts of the valley the only ground kept under cultivation, and 

 the indigenous vegetation there is of a quite distinct character. 

 Instead of the algarrobo, we have the willow and a small composite 

 tree, Tessaria legitima, with leaves very like those of Salix cinerea, and 

 soft brittle wood, which is the common fuel at Lima and elsewhere on 

 the coast, where it is called Pajaro bobo. Less abundant than those two 

 trees are Buddleia americana, a pretty Cassia, two species of Baccharis, 

 two rampant Mimosce (one of them M. asperata), Muntingia Calaburu 

 and Cestrum hediondinum (called Yerba Santa), of which only the two 

 last grow to be trees of moderate size, the rest being weak bushes or 

 shrubs. Over trees and bushes climb a half-shrubby Asclepiad (Sar- 

 costemma sp.), with very milky stems and umbels of pretty white 

 flowers, a Cissus, a Passifiora allied to P. fcetida, a pretty delicate gourd 

 plant, and a Mikania. 



It is usually only on the vega that we find any herbaceous vegeta- 

 tion, except in the rainy years. There the Cana brava, a Gynerium, 

 with a stem fifteen feet high and leafy all the way up, and with smaller 

 and less silky panicles than the other species, grows in large patches. 

 The huts of the Indians and Mestizos in the suburbs of Piura have 

 often nothing more than a single row of Caha brava stems stuck into 

 the ground for walls, and others laid horizontally over them for roof, 



