Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/172

 *[Footnote: brought back with us, not one was collected to the north of Quito and the Volcano of Pichincha; but my friend Professor Kunth remarks that Calceolaria perfoliata, which Boussingault and Captain Hall found at Quito, advances to New Granada, and that this species, as well as C. integrifolia of Santa Fé de Bogotá, were given by Mutis to the great Linnæus.

The species of Pinus which are so frequent in the tropical Antilles and in the tropical mountains of Mexico do not pass the isthmus of Panama, and are not found in the equally mountainous parts of the tropical portion of South America, and in the high plains of New Granada, Pasto, and Quito. I have been both in the plains and on the mountains from the Rio Sinu, near the isthmus of Panama, to 12° S. lat.; and in this tract of almost 1600 geographical miles the only forms of needle-trees which I saw were a Taxus-like species of Podocarpus with stems 60 (64 Eng.) feet high (Podocarpus taxifolia), growing in the Pass of Quindiu and in the Paramo de Saraguru, in 4° 26´ north, and 3° 40´ south latitude; and an Ephedra (E. americana) near Guallabamba, north of Quito.

Among the Coniferæ there are common to the northern and southern hemispheres the genera Taxus, Gnetum, Ephedra, and Podocarpus. The last-named genus was distinguished from Pinus long before L'Heritier by Columbus himself, who wrote on the 25th of November, 1492: "Pinales en la Serrania de Haiti que no llevan piñas, pero frutos que parecen azeytunos del Axarafe de Sevilla." (See my Examen crit. T. iii. p. 24.) There are species of Taxus from the Cape of Good Hope to 61° N. lat. in Scandinavia,]*