70 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
sandy, small plots of ground were under cultivation, 
but produced little more than water-melons, pump- 
kins, and plantains of poor quality. Many such 
plantations, long since run to waste, had got grown 
up with caapoera, comprising a dense growth of 
small trees, shrubs, and twiners, mostly different 
from those of the campo. The commonest plants 
in flower at that time were species of Casearia and 
Lacistema, two genera often found growing together, 
and with much external resemblance, but very widely 
separated in character. The former are not unlike 
our hazel bushes, and have large, two-ranked, toothed 
leaves, axillary clusters of greenish or whitish flowers, 
and three-valved capsules very like those of violets. 
The latter, with a similar but rather more rigid 
habit, have small axillary catkins. There were 
also species of Erythroxylon — a genus rarely absent 
from caapoeras in the Amazon valley. They grow 
to small trees, not unlike our plum trees or sloes, 
though usually more rigid in their ramification and 
the texture of their leaves, with almost the solitary 
exception of E, Coca, whose thin submembranaceous 
leaves are as indispensable a stimulant to the in- 
habitants of the Peruvian Andes as those of tea to 
the Chinese. In the environs of the town, especially 
along the beach, two oriental trees, the Tamarind 
and the Azedarach, had become naturalised ; as had 
also the handsome Casalpinia pulcherrima, brought 
perhaps originally from the Antilles. I have since 
seen these three plants, growing in the same way, 
and still more abundantly, in the plains of Guayaquil. 
The lowland campos on the Mahica had again a 
different vegetation. There were many sorts of 
grasses which kept fresh and green all the year 
