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IN THE CINCHONA FORESTS 275
higher than I have elsewhere observed. We had four or five
species in our hut, none of them large, and one very minute
species which often damaged my fresh specimens of plants by
mutilating the flowers. It is so abundant at Camaron, 1000
feet lower down, that it fills the pease and barley meal and
renders them uneatable. Ants are far more frequent than in the
temperate region, but less so than in the plains. House flies are
as great a nuisance as at Ambato, and though fleas are not quite
so numerous as in the cool sandy highlands, there were yet plenty
of them (as the Spaniards say) "para el gasto."
As above indicated, Limon was once entirely clad with forests,
in which respect it contrasts strongly with the valley of Alausi,
where the slopes on both sides are covered with grass, even down
to the hot region, and only the lateral valleys and the plateaux are
wooded. I cannot doubt that the difference arises from the
former being situated in the roots of a snowy mountain, while
there is no perpetual snow within a long distance of the latter. I
have observed the same difference, referable to the same cause,
along the eastern side of the Andes. After passing the valley of
San Antonio, to the southward, there is this intermixture of woods
and pajonales all the way to the frontier of Peru. As would
naturally be expected, the vegetation at Limon is far more
luxuriant, and the abundance of ferns, especially in the narrower
valleys, is in striking contrast to their scarcity at Puma-cocha.
Tree-ferns, of five species, are everywhere scattered in the forest,
and add a feature of beauty to the scenery quite wanting in the
valley of Alausi.
1 estimate the average height of the virgin forest at Limon at
there are here and
90 feet ; but, as everywhere else in the tropics,
there trees which stand out far above the mass of the forest. The
monarch of the forest at Limon is an Artocarpea, which, from the
leaves and from flowers picked up beneath the trees, I have little
hesitation in referring to dimensions of a tree of this
Coussapoa. The following are the
species which I found prostrate in a
recent clearing. Length
branches, which had been
120 feet, not including the terminal
lopped off, still 20 inches in circum-
ference,
and which would have made it at least 20 feet more.
Circumference at 10 feet from the ground 12 feet 4 inches ;
from
that point narrow buttresses were sent off to the ground on all
sides. At 25 feet the trunk was forked, and the ramification was
thenceforth dichotomous, at a narrow angle.
No other tree reaches the dimensions of the Artocarpea. A
Lauracea, called Quebra-hacha (Break-axe), rises to no to 120
feet; its exceedingly hard wood is the usual material for the
cylinders of the trapiches. My collection contains unfortunately
very few of the larger trees. On the western slope of the