Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/205

 *[Footnote: E. tubar, Simplocos alstonia, some species of Myrica, and the beautiful Myrtus microphylla which we have figured in the Plantes équinoxiales, T. i. p. 21, Pl. iv. We found it growing on mica slate, and extending to an elevation of more than ten thousand English feet, on the Paramo de Saraguru, near Vinayacu and Alto de Pulla, which is adorned with so many lovely alpine flowering plants. Myrtus myrsinoides even extends in the Paramo de Guamani up to 10500 (11190 English) feet. Of the 40 species of the Genus Myrtus which we collected in the equinoctial zone, and of which 37 were undescribed, much the greater part belonged, however, to the plains and lower mountains. From the mild tropical mountain climate of Mexico we brought back only a single species (Myrtus xalapensis); but the Tierra templada, towards the Volcano of Orizaba, must no doubt contain several more. We found M. maritima near Acapulco, quite on the sea-coast of the Pacific.

The Escallonias,—among which E. myrtilloides, E. tubar, and E. floribunda, are the ornament of the Paramos, and by their physiognomy remind the beholder strongly of the myrtle-form,—once constituted, in combination with the European and South American Alp-roses (Rhododendrum and Befaria), and with Clethra, Andromeda, and Gaylussaccia buxifolia, the family of Ericeæ. Robert Brown (see the Appendix to Franklin's Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, 1823, p. 765), has raised them to the rank of a separate family, which Kunth places between Philadelpheæ and Hamamelideæ.]*