Of Plants Page 19; And A Paper By Mr. Brown On The Proteacea, Transactions Of The Lin.

Soc.

Volume 10 page 1, page 23, in which that great botanist has extended and confirmed by numerous facts my ideas on the association of plants of the same species.) The Avicennia of Cumana is distinguished by another peculiarity not less remarkable: it furnishes an instance of a plant common to the shores of South America and the coasts of Malabar.

The Indian pilot led us across his garden, which rather resembled a copse than a piece of cultivated ground. He showed us, as a proof of the fertility of this climate, a silk-cotton tree (Bombax heptaphyllum), the trunk of which, in its fourth year, had reached nearly two feet and a half in diameter. We have observed, on the banks of the Orinoco and the river Magdalena, that the bombax, the carolinea, the ochroma, and other trees of the family of the malvaceae, are of extremely rapid growth. I nevertheless think that there was some exaggeration in the report of the Indian respecting the age of his bombax; for under the temperate zone, in the hot and damp lands of North America, between the Mississippi and the Alleghany mountains, the trees do not exceed a foot in diameter, in ten years. Vegetation in those parts is in general but a fifth more speedy than in Europe, even taking as an example the Platanus occidentalis, the tulip tree, and the Cupressus disticha, which reach from nine to fifteen feet in diameter. On the strand of Cumana, in the garden of the Guayqueria pilot, we saw for the first time a guama* loaded with flowers, and remarkable for the extreme length and silvery splendour of its numerous stamina. (* Inga spuria, which we must not confound with the common inga, Inga vera, Willd. (Mimosa Inga, Linn.). The white stamina, which, to the number of sixty or seventy, are attached to a greenish corolla, have a silky lustre, and are terminated by a yellow anther. The flower of the guama is eighteen lines long. The common height of this fine tree, which prefers a moist soil, is from eight to ten toises.) We crossed the suburb of the Guayqueria Indians, the streets of which are very regular, and formed of small houses, quite new, and of a pleasing appearance. This part of the town had just been rebuilt, for the earthquake had laid Cumana in ruins eighteen months before our arrival. By a wooden bridge, we crossed the river Manzanares, which contains a few bavas, or crocodiles of the smaller species.

We were conducted by the captain of the Pizarro to the governor of the province, Don Vincente Emparan, to present to him the passports furnished to us by the first Secretary of State at Madrid. He received us with that frankness and unaffected dignity which have at all times characterized the natives of Biscay. Before he was appointed governor of Portobello and Cumana, Don Vincente Emparan had distinguished himself as captain of a vessel in the navy.

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