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360 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
a plant which serves as food for any particular
animal or tribe of animals in a given locality is
pretty certain to have its congener (or at least its
co-ordinate) in any other locality of the same
region.
The riparial plants of the Amazon (such, namely,
as grow between ebb- and flood-mark, or within the
limits to which the annual inundations extend)
range in many instances from the very mouth of
the river up to the roots of the Andes ;
and
I do
not yet know of a single tree which is not found
both on the northern or Guayana shore and on the
southern or Brazilian. 1 The most notable example
of this extensive range is the Pao Mulatto or
Mulatto tree (Enkylista, Benth.), a tall, elegant
tree allied to the Cinchonas, and conspicuous from
its deciduous brown bark, which grows everywhere
on lands flooded by the Amazon, and, from its
accessibility and the readiness with which its wood
burns while green, supplies a great part of the fuel
consumed by the steamers that navigate the Amazon.
It is almost equally common on some of the white-
water tributaries ; I have seen it, for instance, far
away up the Huallaga to the south, and up the
Pastasa to the north. Two of the commonest
river-side Ingas of the Amazon (I. splendens, W.,
and /. corymbifera, Benth.) reappear together on
the Upper Casiquiari and Orinoco ; and similar
instances might be multiplied indefinitely.
Streams of black or clear water have also their
proper riparial vegetation, some species being
1 Hence I suspect that those insects of the south side of the Amazon which
have been identified with Guayana species belong chiefly to the riparial
fi ircsts.