228 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
nothing common. In May, the middle of the wet 
season, not a tree was to be seen in flower in the 
forest or caapoeras, but I found that at that season 
precisely the twiners of the gapo began to flower, 
and the south shore of the river and the inundated 
angle between the Solimoes and the Rio Negro 
was soon quite gay with Serjanias, Asclepiadeae, 
etc. The trees of the gapo do not flower until 
the water begins to leave them. In this month, 
too, I went down to the mouth of the Rio Negro 
(about eight English miles below the Barra), and 
remained there four days. I found it such an 
excellent station that I resolved to revisit it later 
in the season. I met there also an Indian car- 
penter whom I engaged to construct the cabin 
(tolda) of my canoe, and in the month of July I 
took her down there and remained until the cabin 
was completed. There is an extraordinary differ- 
ence in the vegetation of the opposite shores of 
the Amazon at the junction of the Rio Negro and 
Solimoes. You will find in the collection some 
plants marked "mouth of R. Negro" and' others 
"mouth of Solimoes," which the sketch plan 
opposite will explain. 
The former plants are laved by black water and 
the latter by white. Any one at first sight would 
take the Amazon to be the continuation of the Rio 
Negro, from the breadth and direction of the latter; 
but this cannot at all compare with the Solimoes 
for depth of stream and rapidity of current. It 
may be long before any one exposes himself again, 
to gather the few plants I got at tjie mouth of the 
Solimoes — such a place for snakes and ants in the 
trees I never met with. In the wet season every 
