540 THE VEGETABLE WORLD. 
Sugar-cane, Indigo, Cotton-tree, and Tobacco cover the cultivated 
plains. In Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, and Mexico, the great 
colony of the Cactuses arise into lofty stems. In this region Cactus 
opuntia, Cereus, Echinocactus, and Melocactus raise their oddly 
branching stems and clustering flowers. The most remarkable 
of all doubtless being Cereus giganteus. It inhabits the wildest 
and most inaccessible regions, requiring little or no soil to attain 
a prodigious development. It has at first the appearance of an 
enormous tomahawk. Thence rises a column, three yards high, 
which branches off and assumes the shape of an immense can- 
delabrum, the height of which may be twelve or thirteen yards. 
Plate XXI. p. 494, is a representation of several Cactuses belonging 
to this region, from an original drawing by M. Bende, a French 
traveller in this country. Mexico, according to the reports of bota- 
nists, may be divided into three regions by its several latitudes. 
The first extends from the valleys as far as the Oak forests ; this 
is the region of Palms, Cotton, Indigo, Sugar-cane, Coffee plant, 
and other fruits of the tropical zone. The second, situated at an 
elevation of six thousand feet above the sea, is the temperate region. 
It stretches from the Oak forests to the forests of Conifere. At 
this height the temperature is still sufficient to ripen some tropical 
fruits. The third, or cold region, occupies a space comprehended 
between the conifers and eternal snow. In many places it pos- 
sesses a climate under which Pear, Apple, and Cherry trees, and 
the Potato, can still expand and ripen their fruits and tubers. 
In ascending from the foot of Orizaba, Mimosas, Acacias, Cotton 
trees, successively appear and disappear, to be replaced by the Con- 
volvulus, Trumpet flowers, Oaks, Palms, Bananas, Myrtles, Laurels, 
Terebinthacee, Ferns, Magnolias, Arborescent-Ferns, Composites, 
Plane-trees, Storax, Apples, Pears, Cherries, Apricots, Pome- 
granates, Lemon and Orange trees, Orchids, Fuschias, and Cactuses.. 
In the plains of Venezuela, known under the name of Llanos, 
over which we propose to conduct the reader, we shall find in Von 
Alexander Humboldt a faithful and eloquent guide to the vegeta- 
tion. “ We entered,” he says, “into the basin of the Llanos, 
the Mesa of Pesa, in 92° of latitude. The sun was nearly at its 
zenith ; the earth, wherever it appeared, was sterile and destitute of 
vegetation ; the temperature was at 48° to 50° Cent. ; not a breath 
