234 TlMEHRI. 
meliad of gigantic growth — recently named and published 
by Mr. BAKER, from the material which I gathered, 
Brocchinia cordylinoides. Probably half the space here 
occupied by vegetation is in possession of this remark- 
able plant which, so far as is at present known, is con- 
lined to this savannah and the near surroundings of the 
Kaieteur, unless, indeed, a plant to which I shall have 
occasion to allude again later on, discovered by GARDNER, 
in an arid, rocky part of the Organ Mountains, Brazil, 
which, however, he did not identify, is the same 
species. The history of our knowledge of it is very brief 
and may be told in two or three words. With the great 
waterfall around which it is localised, it was discovered 
by the geologist C. B. BROWN, and noticed in his report 
of the discovery of the Kaieteur. Some years later 
it was photographed by Mr. IM THURN in situ, 
who gathered flowering sprigs, which however appear 
to have been imperfect for botanical determination 
and led to its publication under the genus Cordy- 
line.* It has a stem as stout as one's thigh, 
which grows erect and eventually reaches a height of 
fifteen feet in sheltered situations. The leaves never 
part from the stem, but in course of time decay, their 
fibrous bases always remaining. The head forms a dense 
plume the size of one of the largest Agaves or Fourcroyas, 
but with three or four times the quantity of foliage 
possessed by any member of those genera. The dead 
leaves hang down, lapping closely one over the other on 
the stem, which, in specimens only a few feet high, they 
* The few pieces of flower I gathered were literally all I could find 
at the time, which was in November, 1 878, after a drought which had 
lasted, with very insignificant interruptions, for two years.— Ed. 
