MG 
zo>'i: oi' vises. 
Tn its present stnte, the island of Toncriffe, the Qhinerfb * 
of the Guanches, exhibits five zones of plants, which we 
may distinguish by the names — region of vines, region of 
laurels, region of pines, region of the retama, and legion 
of grasses. Those zones are ranged in stages, one above 
another, and occupy, on the steep declivity of the Peak, a 
perpendicular height of 1.750 toises; while fifteen degrees 
iarther north, on the Pyrenees, snow descends to thirteen or 
fourteen hundred toises of absolute elevation. If the plants 
of Teueriffe do not reach the summit of the volcano, it is 
not because the perpetual snow and the cold of the sur- 
rounding atmosphere mark limits which they cannot pass; 
it is the scorified lava of the Malpays, the powdered and 
barren pumice-stone of the Piton, which impede the migra- 
tion of plants towards the brink of the crater. 
The first zone, that of the vines, extends from the sca-sliore 
to two or three hundred toises of height ; it is that which is 
most inhabited, and the only part carefully cultivated. In 
the low regions, at the port of Orotava, and wherever the 
winds have free access, the centigrade thermometer stands 
in winter, in the months of January and February, at noon, 
between fifteen and seventeen degrees ; and the greatest 
heats of summer do not exceed twenty-five or twenty-six 
degrees. The mean tcmporatiu’C of the coasts of Toncriffe 
appears at least to rise to twenty-one degrees (1G'S° Reau- 
mur) ; and the climate in those parts keeps at the medium 
between the climate of Naples and that of the torrid zone. 
The region of the vinos exhibits, among its vegetable pro- 
ductions, eight kinds of arborescent Euphorbia; Mesem- 
brianthoma, which are multiplied from the Cape of Good 
Hope to the Peloponnesus ; the Caealia Kleinm, the Dra- 
caena, and other plants, which in their naked and tortuous 
tranks, in their succulent leaves, and their tint of blueish 
green, exhibit distinctive marks of the vegetation of Africa. 
It is in this zone that the date-tree, the plantain, the 
sugar-cane, the Indian fig, the Arum Coloeasia, the root 
of which furnishes a nutritive fecula, the olive-tree, the 
fruit trees of Europe, the vine, and com are cultivated, 
Corn is reaped from the end of March to the beginning of 
* Of Chinerfe the Europeans ln e formed, by’ corruption, Tchineriffr 
blt.J Teueriffe. 
