2IO 
NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
CHAP. 
ascending by the stream which runs through the 
city. Jameson's house is about 150 yards lower 
down, and poor Hall lived on the opposite side of 
the stream. Dr. Jameson is, however, at the present 
moment in Guayaquil. ... I had the pleasure of 
spending a day with him in Ambato, on his way 
down. He is a tall ruddy Scot, and although on 
the shady side of sixty years, may very well reach 
a hundred and fifty, for he shows no signsi of age 
yet. People who are naturally robust and live 
temperately do reach very advanced age in these 
mountains. Our countryman Dr. Jervis died lately 
at Cuenca, aged a hundred and fifteen years ; and 
here is Mr. Cope, turned of eighty -five, trotting 
about as nimbly as a young man. . . . 
The weather is extraordinarily dry just now, for Quito, and 
vegetation is much burnt up. Before 1 put myself in the doctor's 
hands I contrived to scramble some way up Pichincha, and to 
gather a few mosses ; although I had already gathered the 
greater part of what it produces in other parts of the Cordillera. 
In my garden I have Brachymenium Jamesoiii^ Tayl., Tortula 
denticulata^ Mitt., and some other mosses, and there are many 
more pretty things by the stream close at hand. When I came 
out on the Cordillera last year, one of the first mosses I recog- 
nised was the curious Orthotricheid moss, Streptopogon erythro- 
donttis, Wils., which grows perched on twigs in bushy places, just 
as Orthotrichiim affi?ii and striatum do in England. Another 
of my first findings was your Didymodoii gracilis^ Bridel. 
Grimmia longirostris, Hook., I have gathered abundantly on 
Chimborazo, the original locality. I have little difficulty in recog- 
nising your and Humboldt's mosses, but many of Taylor's I 
cannot satisfactorily identify. Besides the incomplete analysis, 
there is a laxness in the use of terms relating to form in his de- 
scriptions which makes me almost in every case feel uncertain 
whether I have got his plant or not. I have three claimants for 
his Nickei'a gracillwia (Pichincha), and as I find that only one of 
them grows on Pichincha, I have no doubt of its being the species 
intended, though it is the one least like his description of the 
three. 
I am glad that Mr. Mitten is working up the Indian mosses, 
as I hope we shall thus be able to ascertain whether it be really 
