Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/277

 but the luxuriance of vegetation is such that the younger trees which are now resorted to, though only 6 inches in diameter, often attain from 53 to 64 English feet in height. This beautiful tree, which is adorned with leaves above 5 English inches long and 2 broad, growing in dense woods, seems always to aspire to rise above its neighbours. As its upper branches wave to and fro in the wind, their red and shining foliage produces a strange and peculiar effect recognisable from a great distance. The mean temperature in the woods where the Cinchona condaminea is found, ranges between 12-1/2° and 15° Reaumur (60°.2 and 65°.8 Fahrenheit), which are about the mean annual temperatures of Florence and the Island of Madeira; but the extremes of heat and cold observed at these two stations of the temperate zone are never felt around Loxa. Comparisons between the climates of places, one of which is situated in an elevated tropical plain, and the other in a higher parallel of latitude, can be from their nature but little satisfactory.

In order to descend South-South-East from the mountain knot of Loxa to the hot Valley of the Amazons, it is first necessary to pass over the Paramos of Chulucanas, Guamani and Yamoca,—mountain wildernesses of a peculiar character of which we have already spoken, and to which, in the southern parts of the Andes, the name of Puna (a word belonging to the Quichua language) is given. They mostly rise above 9500 (10125 English) feet; they are stormy, often enveloped for days in dense mist, or visited by violent and formidable showers of hail,—consisting not merely of hailstones of different spherical forms, usually a