THE AZORES 



373 



From the edge of the shoulder one looks down a precipitous slope 

 of lava-flows, loose stones, and ashes, covered in places by large 

 patches of the Ling, Thyme, and St. Dabeoc's Heath. One instinc- 

 tively treads on the mats of Ling and Thyme, since they give a 

 firmer foothold during the steep descent. There are few other 

 flowering plants, except the half a dozen above named, that grow on 

 these arid slopes above 6000 feet. 



Very rarely one comes upon some straggler from the woods below 

 growing from seeds dropped by birds in the crevices of a bare lava- 

 cliff. Situated far above the ordinary upper limit of the rain-belt, 

 exposed to the frosts of winter, and unprotected against the in- 

 tensity of the sun's rays in summer, such a plant has a hard struggle 

 to hold its own. It was under such conditions, at an altitude of 

 6300 feet, that the writer found in the middle of July a few scattered 

 individuals of the Azorean Holly (Ilex per ado). Though they were 

 scarcely over a foot in height, their thick woody stocks indicated 

 that they had been established for some years. They were in bloom ; 

 and it was interesting to notice how the axillary flowers were protected 

 against the scorching heat of the sun's rays by the raising of the leaves, 

 which had assumed the vertical position and lay with appressed 

 faces close to the stem. The expanding terminal leaf-buds were 

 shielded by the same device ; but more often than not it had proved 

 to be ineffectual, and the buds were blackened and dead. 



Our botanist has now descended to an altitude of about 6000 feet. 

 Before he gets off the steep upper-third of the mountain on to the 

 wooded and grassy slopes of gentler gradient below, he has yet to 

 clamber down another thousand or fifteen hundred feet over old 

 lava-flows, beds of cinders, and loose stones and boulders that when 

 displaced bound for hundreds of feet down the mountain's side. 

 But, as he descends, the conditions become a little more favourable 

 for plant growth. For a minute or two a driving mist envelopes 

 him and shuts all out from view. He has been in a wisp of cloud 

 and is approaching the upper limit of the rain-belt. 



Should he descend on the western side he will make but few 

 additions to his list of plants, until, at a level of about 5500 feet, 

 he comes upon the outposts of the woods in the form of stunted 

 bushes of the Tree-Heath (Erica azorica). On the eastern slopes 

 of the mountain, where for some reason more humid conditions 

 prevail, as soon as he passes below 6000 feet he will find that the 

 beds of Ling (Calluna vulgaris) afford protection to a variety of 

 different plants. On these wind-swept slopes the Ling beds are 

 only four or five inches high ; and in them nestle dwarfed specimens 

 of Juniperus oxycedrus, flowering and fruiting, though not over 

 six inches in height, as freely as the trees of ten and twelve feet in 

 the woods below. On exposed peaks in this group, as may be 

 observed on the summits of San Miguel, Terceira, etc., one often 

 finds a dense spreading growth of stunted Junipers rising only two 

 feet from the ground, a feature also observed and well described by 

 Watson (p. 224); but nowhere did the present writer notice the 

 dwarfing process so pronounced as in the case of these tiny Junipers 

 fruiting in the Ling beds on the bleak heights of the great mountain 



