76 



peys*, browneas, and ficus giganteas. This 

 humid spot, infested by serpents, presents a rich 

 harvest to the botanist. The brownea, which the 

 inhabitants call rosa del monte, or palo de Cruz, 

 bears four or five hundred purple flowers toge- 

 ther in one thyrsis ; each flower has invariably 

 eleven stamina, and this majestic plant, the 

 trunk of which reaches the height of fifty or 



vol. ii, p. 48), because of it's attaining the height sometimes 

 of a hundred feet, we find in the mountains of Buenavista, 

 and of Los Teques, the ficus nymphaeifolia of the garden of 

 Schoenbrun, introduced into our hot-houses by Mr. Brede- 

 meyer. I am certain of the identity of the species found in 

 the same places j but is it really the f. nymphaeifolia of 

 Linneus, which is supposed to be a native of the East In- 

 dies ? This I doubt. 



* In the experiments which I made at Caraceas, on the 

 air that circulates in plants, I was struck with the fine 

 spectacle, which the petioles and leaves of the clusea rosea 

 display, when slit open under water, and exposed to the 

 rays of the Sun. Each trachea gives out a current of gas, 

 which is purer hy 0 08 than atmospheric air. The phenome- 

 non ceases, the moment the apparatus is placed in the shade. 

 There is also but a very slight disengagement of air at the 

 two surfaces of the leaves of the clusia exposed to the Sun 

 without being slit open. The gas inclosed in the capsules 

 of the cardiospermum vesicarium appeared to me to contain 

 the same proportion of oxygen as the atmosphere, while that 

 contained between the knots, in the hollow of the stalk, is 

 generally less pure, containing only from 0*12 to 0*15 of 

 oxygen. It is necessary to distinguish between the air 

 circulating in the tracheae, and that which is stagnant in the 

 great cavities of the stems and pericarps. 



