49 



three or four thousand toises, diffuses in the 

 air. 



We had scarcely heard the thunder roll once 

 or twice at Atures, and the vegetation already 

 everywhere displayed that vigorous aspect, that 

 brilliancy of colour, which are found on the 

 coast only at the end of the rainy season. The 

 old trees were decorated with beautiful orchi- 

 deas *, yellow bannisterias, blue flowered bigno- 

 nias, peperomias, arums, and pothoses. A sin- 

 gle trunk displays a greater variety of vege- 

 table forms, than an extensive space of ground 

 contains in our countries. Close to the para- 

 site plants peculiar to burning climates we ob- 

 served, not without surprise, in the centre of 

 the torrid zone, and near the level of the sea-f-, 

 mosses resembling in every thing those of Eu- 

 rope. We gathered near the Great Cataracts 

 of Atures that fine species of grimmia J with 

 fontinalis leaves, which has so much fixed the 

 attention of botanists. It is suspended to the 



* Cymbidium violaceum, habenaria angustifolia, &c. 

 f See vol. iii, p. 75. 

 J Grimmia fontinaloides. See Hooker, Musci Exohci 

 Humboldtiana, 1818, tab. ii. The learned author of the Mo- 

 nography of the Jungermanias, Mr. Jackson Hooker, has 

 had the goodness to take upon himself with noble disinterest- 

 edness, to publish at his own expence, at London, the whole 

 collection of cryptogamous plants, which were brought by 

 Mr. Bonpland and myself from the equinoctial regions of 

 America, 



VOL. V, E 



