62 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



gested a company of monks to some early giver of common names, 

 for the same name is used in Ecuador and Peru. 



Some few kilometers before we reached the pass, frailejones dis- 

 appeared and patches of Aciachne pulvinata began. About Alto del 

 Aquila (so named for the great bronze condor surmounting the 

 monument to Bolivar), the highest part of the road, Aciachne is the 

 dominant plant, with patches 10 to 20 feet in diameter forming the 

 densest cover. This grass, occupying windswept heights, is marked 

 by extreme reduction. The stems are an inch or two high, the stiff 

 rolled blades are about a quarter of an inch long, and the inflorescence 

 is reduced to a single spikelet (rarely two or three). The flowers 

 are close-fertilized, the horny lemma tightly enclosing the pistil and 

 the minute stamens and never opening. In the wind-swept paramo 

 ordinary wind-pollinated grasses must waste an enormous amount of 

 pollen; Aciachne avoids this. The tip of the lemma, though short, is 

 as sharp as a needle and attaches the seed to any passing animal. 



The monument to Bolivar bears an inscription (freely translated) 

 "Here, under the breath of war, crossing forests and climbing moun- 

 tains, passed liberty." 



On the descent the country was much the same but less sparsely 

 inhabited. Wheat was being harvested, cut by hand with small 

 sickles. The stone-walled fields are so full of boulders it would seem 

 impossible to grow anything in them, but we saw wheat being threshed 

 in round stone-walled enclosures by horses driven round and round. 

 The grain was winnowed by being tossed in the air in flat baskets. 

 The straw was piled in larger square stone-walled enclosures. We saw 

 a steep slope being plowed, an ox pulling a narrow-bladed plow 

 (wood, edged with iron) — not a plowshare that turns soil, but a blade 

 only scratching the surface — with two men guiding or helping. Pico 

 Bolivar ( 10,256 feet), in Sierra del Norte, and Corona (16,000 feet), 

 in Sierra de Merida, both snow-crowned, were in sight until we neared 

 the city of Merida. This, the principal city of the Andes, lies at 

 5,300 feet elevation. The population of the state is about 17,900. 

 There was a surprising amount of gardening and farming in this 

 little mountain valley. The city, founded in 1558, has a university 

 that dates from before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. We 

 spent one night at Merida and started back before dawn the next 

 morning. Clouds obscure the pass except in the early morning, 

 and motorists aim to cross the pass by 9 o'clock. The whole trip took 

 6 days, and I found interesting grasses in spite of the drought. 



I had several days' botanizing in the Federal District and in the 

 hills and cloud forests of the Cordillera de la Costa. In the vicinity 



