48 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
was sometimes sensible enough, but I could not 
take my thermometer in my excursions to the 
highest points. . . . 
I have been much interested to meet here 
several tribes of plants which I had not seen since 
leaving England. I have got, for instance, a 
Poppy, a Horsetail, a Bramble, a Sanicle (exceed- 
ingly like your common wood Sanicle), some shrubs 
of the Bilberry tribe with edible fruit similar to 
that of the English species, a Buttercup (very like 
the minute Ranunculus hederaceus which grows by 
Ganthorpe Spring), a Hydrocotyle rather smaller 
than the Hydrocotyle vulgaris whose round shining 
leaves you must have noticed in boggy parts of 
Welburn Moor, a Chaffweed like the minute 
Cenhmculus 7ninmms which grows rarely on Stock- 
ton Common, and some others. In a deep dell on 
the way to Moyobamba I was delighted to find a 
few specimens of that rare plant the Chickweed : 
its seeds had most likely been brought in the dung 
of mules which travel that way. . . . 
[The following letter now takes up the narrative 
from the point of view of the botanical collector : — ] 
« 
To Mr. George Bentham 
Tarapoto, Peru, Dec. 25, 1855. 
... I did not get away from Yurimaguas till 
the 1 2th of June, and on the 21st reached the end 
of my long voyage. Yurimaguas has the most 
equable temperature I have anywhere experienced, 
the thermometer sometimes not varying more than 
8° in twenty-four hours, but .1 have found no place 
so relaxing, and the addition of a severe attack of 
