NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
I started from Tabacal on September 28. The 
road thence to Guayaquil follows the right bank of 
the river, as far as to where the latter is confined 
to a deep chasm, and then crosses to the left bank. 
The descent is really very gradual, but seems more 
steep than it is, because the river tosses and 
foams among the huge stones which impede its 
course. As we descended, it was interesting to 
mark the gradual transition to the vegetation of the 
hot region. Leguminous trees, so scarce in the 
hills, began to be frequent. A bombaceous tree 
here and there adorned the forest with its numerous 
purple flowers. Cinchona magnifolia was budding 
for flower ; it accompanied me to within 1000 feet 
of the plain. Enormous figs, with a long cone of 
exserted roots, straddled over the decayed remains, 
or often only over the site, of the tree which had 
served to support them in their infancy, and which 
they had strangled to death after establishing for 
themselves a separate existence. 
At about 1500 feet elevation, I met with a 
Myristica, which grows about Tarapoto at the same 
altitude. A little lower down I saw the first Neea, 
and near it a Vismiia, not one of those weedy species 
diffused throughout tropical America, but a hand- 
some tree, resembling V. uvulifera (from the 
Casiquiari). These three genera seem rarely to 
ascend above the hot region. 
Five leagues below Tabacal the road again 
passes, by a broad pebbly ford, to the right bank 
at Pozuelos, where we drew up for the night, 
thoroughly wetted by a soaking shower which had 
accompanied us for the last hour and a half 
Pozuelos is a miserable little bamboo village, but 
