GEOLOGIC EOEM ATI OS’S. 
233 
astringent juice of tliis plant is employed to strengthen the 
gums. The Indians recognize the species by the smell, 
and more particularly by chewing the woody fibres. Two 
natives, to whom the same wood was given to chew, pro- 
nounced without hesitation the same name. We could avail 
ourselves but little of the sagacity of our guides, for how 
could we procure leaves, flowers, and fruits growing on 
trunks, the branches of which commence at fifty or sixty feet 
high? We were struck at finding in this hollow the bark 
of trees, and even the soil, covered with moss * aud lichens. 
The cryptogamous plants are here as common as in northern 
countries. Their growth is favoured by the moisture of the 
air, and the absence of tho direct rays of the sun. Never- 
theless the temperature is generally at 25° in the day, and 
19° at night. 
The rocks which bound the crevice of Cuchivano are per- 
pendicular like walls, and are of the same calcareous forma- 
tion which we observed the whole way from Punta Delgada. 
It is here a blackish grey, of compact fracture, tending some- 
times towards the sandy fracture, and crossed by small veins 
of white carbonated lime. In these characteristic marks we 
thought we discovered the alpine limestone of Switzerland 
and the Tyrol, of which the colour is always deep, though 
in a less degree than that of the transition limestone.f The 
first of these formations constitutes the Cuchivano, the 
nucleus of the Imposible, and in general the whole group of 
the mountains of New Andalusia. I saw no petrifactions in 
it; but the inhabitants assert that considerable masses of 
shells are found at great heights. The same phenomenon 
occurs in the country about Snlzburg.J At the Cuchivano 
the alpine limestone contains beds of marly elay,§ three or 
resins found in the forests of Cumana, makes a just distinction between 
the Draco de la Sierra de TJnare, which has pinnate leaves (Pterocarpus 
Draco), and the Draco de la Sierra de Paria, with entire and hairy leaves. 
The latter is the Croton sanguifluutn of Cumanacoa, Caripe, and Cariaco. 
* Real musci frundosi. We also found, besides a small Boletus stipi- 
tatus, of a snow-white colour, the Boletus igniarius, and the Lycoperdon 
6tellatum of Europe. 1 had found this last otdy in very dry places in 
Germany and Poland. 
t Eseher, in the “Alpina,” vol. iv., p. 340. 
I In Switzerland, the solitary beds of shells, at the height of from 
1,300 to 2,000 toises, (in the J ungfrauhorn, the Dent de Morcle, and the 
Dent du Midi,) belong to transition limestone. § Mergelschiefer. 
