Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/203

 *[Footnote: and 14000 feet, (about 12790 and 14920 English,) which we often visited,—we did not find, either in the Andes of Mexico or in those of Quito and Peru, anything which could recall the small creeping alpine willows of the Pyrenees, the Alps, and Lapland (S. herbacea, S. lanata, and S. reticulata). In Spitzbergen, where the meteorological conditions have much analogy with those of the Swiss and Scandinavian snow-mountains, Martins described two dwarf willows, of which the small woody stems and branches creep on the ground, and which lie so concealed in the turf-bogs that their small leaves are only discovered with difficulty under the moss. The species found by me in Peru in 4° 12´ S. latitude, near Loxa, at the entrance of the forests where the best Cinchona bark is collected, and described by Willdenow as Salix humboldtiana, is the one which is most widely distributed in the western part of South America. A sea-shore species, S. falcata, which we found on the sandy coast of the Pacific, near Truxillo, is, according to Kunth, probably only a variety of the above; and possibly the fine and often pyramidal willow which accompanied us along the banks of the Magdalena, from Mahates to Bojorque, and which, according to the report of the natives, had only extended so far within a few years, may also be identical with Salix humboldtiana. At the confluence of the Rio Opon with the Magdalena, we found all the islands covered with willows, many of which had stems 64 English feet high, but only 8 to 10 inches in diameter. (Humboldt and Kunth, Nova Gen. Plant. T. ii. p. 22, tab. 99.) Lindley has made us acquainted with a species of Salix from Senegal, and there-*]*