\ 



160 humboldt's cuba. 



do we begin to find it, in the mountains of St. 

 Domingo, and throughout the island of Cuba, which 

 extend from 20° to 23° of latitude. There, it attains 

 a height of sixty or seventy feet, and what is still 

 more strange, the pine and the mahogany grow side 

 by side in the plains of the Isle of Pines. The pine 

 is also found in the southeastern part of Cuba, on 

 the sides of the Cobre Mountains, where the soil is 

 arid and sandy. 



The interior plain of Mexico is covered with this 

 same class of coniferas, if we may rely upon the 

 comparison made by Bonpland and myself, with the 

 specimens we brought from Acaguisotla. the snow 

 mountain of Toluca, and the Cofre of Perote, for 

 these do not seem to differ specifically from the 

 pinus occidentalis of the Antilles, as described by 

 Schwartz. But these pines, which we find at the 

 level of the sea in Cuba, between the 20° and 22° of 

 latitude, and only upon its southern side, do not 

 descend lower than 3,200 feet above that level upon 

 the Mexican continent, between the parallels of 17%° 

 and 19£°. I have even observed that on the road 

 from Perote to Jalapa, on the eastern mountains of 

 Mexico, opposite to Cuba, the limit of the pines is 

 5,950 feet, while on the western mountains, between 

 Chilpancingo and Acapulco, near Cuasiniquilapa, 

 two degrees further south, it descends to 3,900 feet, 



