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210 NOTES OF A BOTANIST
ascending by the stream which runs through the
city. Jameson's house is about 150 yards lower
down, and poor Hall lived on the opposite side of
the stream. Dr. Jameson is, however, at the present
moment in Guayaquil. ... I had the pleasure of
spending a day with him in Ambato, on his way
down. He is a tall ruddy Scot, and although on
the shady side of sixty years, may very well reach
a hundred and fifty,
for he shows no signs; of age
yet. People who are naturally robust and live
in these
temperately do reach very advanced age
mountains. Our countryman Dr. Jervis died lately
and
at Cuenca, aged a hundred and fifteen years ;
here is Mr. Cope, turned of eighty -five, trotting
about as nimbly as a young man. . . .
The weather is extraordinarily dry just no\v, for Quito, and
vegetation is much burnt up. Before I put myself in the doctor's
hands I contrived to scramble some way up Pichincha, and to
gather a few mosses I ; although had already gathered the
greater part of what it produces in other parts of the Cordillera.
In my garden I have Brachymenium Jameson!, Tayl., Tortula
denticulata, Mitt., and some ether mosses, and there are many
more pretty things by the stream close at hand. When I- came
out on the Cordillera last year, one of the first mosses I recognised
was the curious Orthotricheid moss, Streptopogon crythro-
dontits, Wils., which grows perched on twigs in bushy places, just
as Orthotrichum affini and striatum do in England. Another
of my first findings was Grimmia Icngirostris,
your Didymodon gracilis, Bridel.
Hook., I have gathered abundantly on
Chimborazo, the original locality. I have little difficulty in recognising
your and Humboldt's mosses, but many of Taylor's I
cannot satisfactorily identify. Besides the incomplete analysis,
there is a laxness in the use of terms relating
scriptions
to form in his de-
which makes me almost in every case feel uncertain
whether I have got his plant or not. I have three claimants for
one of
his Nickcra gmcillimti (Pichincha), and as I find that only
them grows on Pichincha, I have no doubt of its being the species
intended, though it is the one least like his three.
description of the
I am glad that Mr. Mitten is working up the Indian mosses,
as I hope we shall thus be able to ascertain whether it be really