77 



sixty feet, is becoming rare, because it's wood 

 yields a highly valued charcoal. The soil is 

 covered with pine-apples, hemimeris, polygala, 

 and melastomas. A climbing gramen* unites 

 together with it's light festoons trees, the pre- 

 sence of which attests the great coolness of t:ie 

 climate of these mountains. Such are the 

 aralia capitata the vismia caparosa, and the 

 clethra fagifolia. Amid these plants, peculiar 

 to the fine region of the arborescent ferns (re- 

 gion de los helechos ) some palm-trees rise in the 

 openings, and some scattered groups of guarumo, 

 or cecropia with silvery leaves, the trunks of 

 which, of small thickness, are of a black colour 

 toward the summit, as if they had been burnt 

 by the oxygen of the atmosphere. We are 

 surprised to find so noble a tree, which has the 

 port of the theophrasta and the palm-tree, bear- 

 ing generally only eight or ten terminal leaves. 

 The ants, that inhabit the trunk of the guarumo, 

 or jarumo, and destroy the interior cells, seem 

 to impede it's growth. We had already made 

 one herborization in the temperate mountains 

 of Higuerota, in the month of December, 

 accompanying the capitania-general, Mr. de 

 Guevara, in an excursion with the intendant of 



* Carice. See vol. iii, p. 17. 



+ Candelero. We found it also at la Cumbre, at a height 

 of 700 toises. 



