iO GEOLOGICAL PHENOMENON. 
but wliat a contrast in the vigour and richness of the vege- 
tation ! The white tranks of the cecropia rise majestically 
amid bignonias and melastomas. They do not disappear till 
we are within a hundred toises above the level of the ocean. 
A small thorny palm-tree extends also to this limit ; the 
slender pinnate leaves of which look as if they had been 
curled toward the edges. This tree is very common in 
these mountains ; but not having seen either its fruit or its 
flowers, we are ignorant whether it be the piritu palm-tree 
of the Caribbees, or the Cocos aculeata of Jacquin. 
The rock on this road presents a geological phenome- 
non, the more remarkable as the existence of real stratified 
granite has long been disputed. Between La Trinehera and 
the Hato de Cambury a coarse-grained granite appears, 
which, from the disposition of the spangles of mica, collected 
in small groups, scarcely admits of confounding with gneiss, 
or with rocks of a schistose texture. This granite, divided 
into ledges of two or three feet thick, is directed 52° north- 
east, and slopes to the north-west regularly at an angle of 
from 30° or 40°. The feldspar, crystallized in prisms with 
four unequal sides, about an inch long, passes through every 
variety of tint from a flesh-red to yellowish white. The 
mma , united in hexagonal plates, is black, and sometimes 
green. The quartz predominates in the mass ; :ind is ge- 
nerally of a milky white. I observed neither hornblende, 
black schorl, nor rutile titanite, in this granite. In 
some ledges we recognised round masses, of a blackish 
gray, very quartzose, and almost destitute of mica. They 
are from one to two inches diameter; and are found in 
every zone, in all granite mountains. These are not im- 
bedded fragments, as at Grreiffenstein in Saxony, but aggre- 
gations of particles which seem to have been subjected to 
partial attractions. I could not follow the line of junc- 
tion of the gneiss and granitic formations. According to 
angles taken in the valleys of Aragua, the gneiss appears to 
descend below the granite, which must consequently be of 
a more recent formation. The appearance of a stratified 
granite excited my attention the more, because, having had 
the direction of the mines of Fichtelberg in Franconia for 
several years, I was accustomed to see granites divided into 
ledges of three or four feet thick, but little inclined, and 
