MOUNTAIN VEGETATION. 
4:82 
infested by serpents, presents a rich harvest to the botanist 
The Brownea, which the inhabitants call rosa del monte, or 
palo de crux, bears four or five hundred purple flowers 
together in one thyrsus ; each flower has invariably eleven 
stamina, and this majestic plant, the trunk oi which grows 
to the height of fifty or sixty feet, is becoming rare, because 
its wood yields a highly valued charcoal. The soil is covered 
•with pines (ananas), hemimeris, polygaia, and melastomas. 
A climbing gramen* with its light festoons unites trees, 
the presence of which attests the coolness of the climate of 
these mountains. Such are tho Araiia capitafca,+ the Vienna 
caparosa, and the Clethra fagifolia. Among these plants, 
peculiar to the fine region of the arborescent ferns, J some 
palm-trees rise in the openings, and some scattered groups 
of quarimo, or cecropia with silvery leaves. The trunks of 
the latter are not very thick, and are of a black colour 
towards the summit, as if burnt by the oxygen of the atmo- 
sphere. Wo are surprised to find so noble a tree, which 
has the port of the theophrasta and the palm-tree, bearing 
generally only eight or ten terminal leaves. The ants, which 
inhabit the trunk of tho gmrumo, or jaramo, and destroy 
its interior cells, seem to impede its growth. We had 
already made ono horborization in the temperate mountains 
of the Higueroto in the month of December, accompanying 
the eapi tan-general, Sefior de Guevara, in an excursion with- 
the intendant of the province to the \ alles de Aragua. M. 
Eonpland then found in the thickest part of the forest some 
plants of aquatire, the wood of which, celebrated for its 
fine red colour, will probably one day become an article of 
exportation to Europe. It is the Sickmgia erythroxylor. 
described by Bredemeyer and Willdenow. 
ment of air at the two surfaces of the leaves of the cliisia exposed to the 
sun without being cut open. The gas enclosed in the capsules of the 
Cardiospermum vesiearium appeared to me to contain the same propor- 
tion of oxygen as the atmosphere, while that contained between the knots, 
in the hollow of the stalk, is generally less pare, containing only from 
0*12 to 0 15 of oxygen. It is necessary to distinguish between the air 
circulating in the rrachese. and that which is stagnant in the great cavities 
of the stems and pericarps. 
* Carice. See p. 207. _ , , , n0 
f Candelero. We found it also at La Cumbre, at a height ot 70w 
tol + Called by the inhabitants of the country 1 Region de los helechos.’ 
