Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

5 o NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
rock, where they issue from the hills. These
and often include
steep narrows are called pongos,
falls and rapids. They are rich places for ferns,
but it is both difficult and dangerous getting along
them, now and then scrambling over large slippery
rocks which block up the passage, or wading up to
the middle through dark holes with the water
below 70. An exploration of one of these places
generally costs me a week's suffering
in the feet.
I have at last got into a fern country, and I have
already gathered more species than in all my
Brazilian and Venezuelan travels. Mosses also are
more abundant, and there is a greater proportion of
large species.
Among the flowers I believe you will find a good share of
novelty. I expect I have two new genera of Rubiaceae, both
very fine things, one of them allied to Calycophyllum but with
large flowers almost like those of Henriquezia. There are new
things also in several other tribes. The general character of the
vegetation is, as might be expected, intermediate between that of
the valley of the Amazon and of its alpine sources. As evidences
of an approach to cooler regions, and to a flora more European
in its affinities, I may mention having met here, for the first time
in my American travels, a Horsetail, a Poppy, a Bramble, a
Crosswort, and a Ranunculus (a minute species, trailing over moss
by mountain streams, and looking quite like a Hydrocotyle).
The ferns may possibly include some new species, especially
among the larger ones, which are likely enough to have been
passed over on account of their bulkiness. The fronds of one of
these are 22 feet in it length, though never shows more than a
rudimentary caudex : its affinity seems to be with Cyathea. In
my collection are a good many species of Grammitis, Meniscium,
Davallia, Diplazium, Litobrochia, Aneimia, etc., together with
several pretty SeJaginellas and an Adder's -tongue. A small
species of Grammitis growing on trees in the mountains is very
odoriferous when dry, and the Indian women it put in their hair,
it calling Asinima.
These things have not been got together with-
out greater trouble than I had calculated on. I
expected to find roads on which I could take long