XXII 
ON THE PACIFIC COAST 
315 
when I can analyse them microscopically. So soon 
as the plants are dried I pack them into other paper 
and add the labels from my notes. As it often 
happens that, at each packing, I have not two plants 
of even the same natural order, the risk of trans- 
position is very small. Indeed, so completely does 
the reading over of my notes recall the features of 
the plants, that I feel sure if I were shown the 
whole of my plants classified in your herbarium, 
and on blank paper, I could, from consulting my 
notes, put to them the proper numbers and localities 
without making perhaps a single mistake. As to 
positive errors of observation, I am as liable as any 
other mortal. I would wish to speak with all 
modesty on that head ; and working often in boats, 
or in dismal huts where a squall would suddenly 
enter the open doorway and disperse both specimens 
and labels, there must occasionally have been some 
transposition of both in gathering them up again. 
This risk of the blowing away or dropping out of 
labels was, in fact, what made me give up putting 
labels to the plants as they were drying. 
I have gathered a few plants since I came here, but the rainy 
season is now reaching its height and all around I have deep 
mud and water. The village is scarcely 300 yards from the farm- 
house where I live, yet I cannot go thither on foot, except with 
india-rubber boots. Capraria peruviana (Scroph.) grows about 
in moist places as Coutoubcea spicata (Gentians) does on the 
Amazon, and looks not unlike it. The arborescent vegetation is 
scanty but novel. The finest tree is a Caesalpinia with bipinnate 
mimosseoid foliage — I cannot reduce it to any described genus. 
There are several arborescent Capparides — all new to me ; but 
CratcEva tapioides is an old acquaintance, and abounds as it did 
on the Amazon. The Leguminosae are mostly out of flower 
now, but I recognise none of them by the foliage, unless one 
be Bowdichia pubesce7is. Guayaquil is noted for its fruits, and 
the abundance and variety brought to the port for sale every 
morning in summer are truly astonishing. Many of them come 
