VEGETATION OF BRAZIL. 
573 
particular, many curious and beautiful little 
ferns, all new species, and several beautiful 
Vellozias ; these plants are peculiar to Brazil, 
and as I have so often spoken of them, I shall 
here describe their appearance : they belong 
to the Endogenous or Monocotyledonous divi- 
sion of the Vegetable Kingdom, and were 
named in honour of Dr. Joaquim Vellozo de 
Miranda, a Jesuit, who was a native of the 
province of Minas Geraes, and who devoted 
much of his leisure time to the study of the 
botany of his country. They are most com- 
monly found on the mountains of the interior, 
but principally in the gold and diamond 
districts, growing in open grassy places, and 
often covering large tracts; they vary in 
height from a few inches to twelve feet, their 
stems are very dry and fibrous, and seem to be 
made up of a great mass of long slender roots 
loosely hung together ; and not unfrequently 
they contain a resinous matter, which causes 
them to be sought after in the woodless re- 
gions of the diamond district for fuel. Some- 
times these stems are not less than a foot in 
diameter, they are very much branched, and 
are entirely leafless, except the last divisions 
of the branches, which are clothed with long, 
narrow, aloe-like leaves, not however, fleshy; 
from the centre of these spi-ing the flowers, 
which are generally solitary, although some 
of the smaller species have as many as six 
arising from the end of each branch. In the 
large kinds, the flowers are about six inches 
long, either of a pure white, or more fre- 
quently of a beautiful purple colour ; in shape, 
they are not unlike the large white lily of our 
gardens, and hence their name of tree-lilies. 
These plants are called by the Brazilians, 
Canela d'Emu (literally Emu shanks) from 
their bare stems resembling the legs of that 
bird. These beautiful plants were first intro- 
duced into the hothouses of England, from 
seeds sent home by me, and as they are of a 
very slow growth, and apparently difficult of 
cultivation, it may reasonably be expected 
they will be a long time before they can ex- 
liibit the beauty of their wild progenitors." — 
Pp. 343, 344. 
" One dark night, about the beginning of 
December, while passing along the streets of 
the Villa de Natividade, I observed some boys 
amusing themselves with some luminous ob- 
ject, which I at first supposed to be a kind of 
large fire-fly ; but on making inquiry I found 
it to be a beautiful phosphorescent fungus, 
belonging to the genus Agaricus, and was 
told that it grew abundantly in the neigh- 
bourhood, on the decaying leaves of a dwarf 
palm. Next day I obtained a great many 
specimens, and found them to vary from one 
to two and a half inches across. The whole 
plant gives out at night a bright phospho- 
rescent light, of a pale greenish hue, similar 
to that emitted by the larger fire-flies, or by 
those curious soft-bodied marine animals, the 
Pyrosomce ; from this circumstance, and from 
growing on a palm, it is called by the inhabi- 
tants ' Flor do Coco ;' the light given out by 
a few of these fungi, in a dark room, was 
sufficient to read by. It proved to be quite 
a new species, and since my return from 
Brazil, has been described by the Rev. Mr. 
Berkeley under the name of Agaricus Gard- 
neri, from preserved specimens which I 
brought home. I had already named it A. 
phosphorescens, not being aware at the time 
I discovered it, that any other species of tlie 
same genus exhibited a similar phenomenon ; 
such, however, is the case in the Agaricus 
olearius of De Candolle; and Mr.Drummondof 
the Swan River colony, in Australia, has given 
an account of a very large phosphorescent spe- 
cies, occasionally found there." — .Pp.346, 347. 
The fields about the banks of the Rio de 
Palma were gay with a fine terrestrial orchid- 
eous plant, an Epistephium, about two feet 
high, bearing a spike of large rose-coloured 
flowers. 
" The country around Array as aflfbrds 
many prospects as highly picturesque and 
pleasing to the eye of a common observer as 
to that of the naturalist ; to the latter, how- 
ever, it offers a double charm, owing to the 
great variety in the objects which such diver- 
sity of soil and situation present for his 
investigations. My excursions in various 
directions yielded me upwards of three hun- 
dred species of plants, all different from any 
I had elsewhere collected. Tiie dry upland 
Campos afforded numerous grasses, which are 
nearly all coarse and rank, and not well suited 
for pasturage ; these grasses do not form a 
close turf, as in Europe, but grow in scattered 
tufts, leaving greater intervals of bare soil 
than the amount of surface actually covered 
by them ; this, however, is not apparent at 
first sight, for the culm is generally long, and 
when ripe, and seen from a distance, the 
Campos appear as if covered with wheat or 
oats. Many flowering shrubs and beautiful 
herbaceous plants are found growing among 
the grasses; of the former Diplusodon and 
Kielmeyera, are the most ornamental ; one of 
the latter, {Kielmeyera rosea, Mart.) grows 
in bushes about a foot and a half high, and 
produces numerous large rose-coloured flowers, 
from which it has obtained the name of Rosa 
do Campo. Of the herbaceous plants of these 
tracts, the most "beautiful are those belonging 
to the Gentian tribe. A species of Lisianthus 
produces large blue bell-shaped blossoms, not 
unlike those of the Digitalis in shape ; and 
towards the end of the rainy season, the fields 
