Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/193

 *[Footnote: As some of the Bambusaceæ (arborescent grasses) advance into the temperate zone, so within the tropics they do not suffer from the temperate climate of the mountains. They certainly grow more luxuriantly as social plants from the sea coast to the height of about 2560 English feet; for example, in the province de las Esmeraldas, west of the Volcano of Pichincha, where Guadua augustifolia (Bambusa Guadua in our Plantes équinoxiales, T. i. Tab. xx.) produces in its interior much of the siliceous Tabaschir (Sanscrit tvakkschira, ox-milk), In the pass of Quindiu we saw the Guadua growing at an elevation which we found by barometric measurement to be 5400 (5755 English) feet above the level of the Pacific. Nastus borbonicus is called by Bory de St. Vincent a true Alpine plant; he states that it does not descend lower on the declivity of the Volcano in the Island of Bourbon than 3600 (3837 English) feet. This recurrence or repetition as it were at great elevations of the forms characteristic of the hot plains, recalls the mountain group of palms before pointed out by me (Kunthia Montana, Ceroxylon andicola, and Oreodoxa frigida), and a grove or thicket of Musaceæ sixteen English feet high (Heliconia, perhaps Maranta), which I found growing isolated at an elevation of 6600 (7034 English) feet, on the Silla de Caraccas. (Rélation hist. T. i. p. 605-606.) As, with the exception of a few isolated herbaceous dicotyledones, grasses form the highest zone of phænogamous vegetation round the snowy summits of lofty mountains, so also, in advancing in a horizontal direction towards either pole of the Earth, the phænogamous vegetation terminates with grasses.]*