82 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
stomes, mixed with a very fine Gentianad [Lysianthus 
Mliginoszis var.) with the habit of a Campanula, and 
with similar bright bluebell-shaped flowers. Here 
and there hung large bunches of Lycopodium cernuum, 
with gracefully curling branches, and fruit- bearing 
spikes like those of the common club-moss. With 
it grew another fern, Gleichenia glaucescens, with 
long rampant stems (like all its congeners) re- 
peatedly pinnate, the pinnae often reduced to a 
single pair, so that the type of division might seem 
to be forked. Gymnogramme calomelanos — its much- 
divided fronds of the deepest green above but 
beneath covered with a white pruina, as if strewed 
with flour — appeared wherever wet trickled from 
the cliff. It is perhaps the commonest of all the 
ferns of tropical America, and struggles even up 
to the cold paramos of the Andes, where, although 
dwindled from 3 feet (its size in the plains) to 
as many inches, it preserves all its characteristic 
features. 
On the eastern side of the town a small rivulet 
ran down a valley from the northward, and before 
entering the Amazon expanded into a lake, known 
as the Lago de Obidos. The gentle descent to 
this rivulet was sandy, and the forest of rather 
humble growth. Of the few trees then in flower 
the most striking were a wild Cacao ( Theobroma 
Spruceana, Bern.), 40 feet high, with a crown of 
leafy branches at the summit, and bunches of 
flowers all the way up the straight slender trunk ; 
a fine Chrysobalan [Licania latifolia, Bth.) ; a 
Guarea with pinnate leaves and long racemes of 
small white flowers ; various species of Inga, ^ 
Cupania, etc. Under the trees grew a nightshade 
